Creative Christmas Shopping

We recently decided to get rid of a bunch of toys.  The day we were getting rid of stuff, a neighbor came over and I gave her some things for her kids.  While we were chatting, she mentioned she thought it would be a good idea for the her kids to set up shop and sell toys to my kids so my kids could purchase gifts for their siblings.  I promptly forgot about the whole idea.  About a week later, she mentioned that her kids were happily setting up a shop for our kids to come shopping.  OH!  About a week after that I casually mentioned to my kids what they were planning and that they could sell toys to those kids in return.

The last couple of days, Rebekah and Seth have been busily setting up a shop in Seth's bedroom for the neighbor kids.  They even set up a table in the room with "display only" items - complete with a sign!  This morning, Rebekah told me that she and Seth had to have tea because they were using the tea bag tags as price tags on their items.  I quickly told her she was welcome to take the tags off all the tea bags as long as she didn't ruin the tea bag!

About an hour before the other kids came over, Seth and Rebekah had the Christmas lights on, the Christmas music on and were still arranging their store.  They even had Josiah stationed outside the door (with a big sign on the door reading "CLOSED") with a walkie talkie.  He was their security guard!  He LOVED this job.  He stood there while they chatted back and forth through the door.

The other kids came over and shopped and later today my kids went to their house and shopped.  They were supposed to price the things VERY cheaply ($.01 to $.25).  They didn't always, but they did let the kids pay pretty much whatever they could.  Funny though, all that prep work and my kids had VERY few toys set out to buy!!!  I think it must be because we'd just given away a bunch of toys.

My favorite thing was when Rebekah was showing me the gifts she had purchased.  She mentioned that she had a bag of gumballs because her friend couldn't give her change.  Then I asked her how much she spent.  "Five dollars.  I didn't want to bring the coins over because I only had the ones they had given me earlier in the day and I'm saving those.  So I took five dollars over."  HILARIOUS!  She has NO concept of money, obviously!  She kept a few coins - maybe worth $1 and spent five.  And happily took gumballs as change!!!