Well, I certainly did.
My children caught on pretty early in life that when you want, you work. So when my two youngest- Crash and Eddy- want some new thing to play with they ask if Dad has some work they can do. (Did you Ice Age fans catch that reference!?) I'm sure this is common in families where no regular allowance is given and especially in families where the children are given responsibility for purchasing their own clothing and what-nots.
What may not be so common is for a nine and seven year old to take their hard-earned cash to Ace Hardware. Of all places why there? I think there are a couple of reasons. One is that we are quite limited in our store varieties here in Small-town-ville. Another, is that being in the business of building and woodworking their parents often have need of a hardware store. The funnest reason is that these two are eccentric and unique and have spent their whole lives outside of the box.
Crash and Eddy's most recent trip to Ace Hardware brought home a couple of rubber mallets and a pair of magnifying glasses.
I have not seen any activity with the rubber mallets, but the list of things with tiny burn marks keeps getting longer.
Here are my two youngest boys who would be going into 2nd grade and 4th grade in a traditional school. Without anyone deciding to open a book to talk about how convexed glass can focus the sun's radiation into a very small point, they opened up the topic on their own. They came to us and asked, "Why does this happen?" (with much excitement, I might add!) Then, they spent unforced hours studying the effect of intense heat on dozens of types of materials.
We also add safety-consciousness to the "curriculum" by extending their thinking to any and all possible consequences of what they are about to do!
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