One evening while walking in the alley my daughter found a crushed Air Force class ring. Our alley ways are heavily traveled and as there was no identifying information on the ring, I told her she could keep it.
This was the beginning of a multi-day adventure. The first thing she exclaimed was, "Let's take it to the "We Buy Gold" place." I am not sure if you have these in your town, but we drive by one on our way to the grocery store several times a week and the kids are fascinated because there is always a man outside dancing, trying to lure customers in. They really wanted to go to a place like this. The kids chattered as they speculated how much money they could make. Then they negotiated if she could keep the money, split it equally, or use it for a family adventure. All points we discussed fully as you might imagine.
Before we went to the shop, we remembered that we had an extracted tooth with gold in it. We decided to bring that too. (On the phone the shop assured us that they bought teeth all the time, ew).
We headed in to make our fortune. The kids were so excited. As usual, I am reminded about how much real learning happens in the everyday. Especially, when the adventures are organic and embraced by everyone. When you are open to all that is around you, one thing inevitably leads to the next and so on. Our little adventures are like rivers, pulling us along.
This story has a bit of a sad ending. We made no money.
But we learned :
what class rings are and who in our family has them.
about different grades of gold and what gold is mixed with
how they test for gold (we were given a demonstration of this)
some of the properties of gold (heavy and malleable)
what other precious metals can be sold
why the gold shop might have to buzz you inside
that metals are measured in oz.
that if our ring was made of real gold, we could have made about $300 bucks
I actually think we made out pretty good!
what a great experience. love it. :)
ReplyDeletethanks! it never ceases to amaze me what we can find entertaining and interesting.
DeleteSo funny that you posted this today! Before I read this, we drove by that place today and my oldest daughter said that sometime she wanted to stop in to learn about gold!
ReplyDeleteha! as homeschoolers we seem to be learning all the time. the same sort of thing happened when we went to pick out granite - we ended up getting a whole lecture about how granite was formed and what the veins meant. then, the kids were all given pieces of granite to take home.
DeleteI love this little on-the-whim learning adventure you shared with your children. It seems you were fortunate to come upon a gold shop man who was very willing to share his trade and knowledge with your eager young listeners. Yes, you all came home much, much richer in new knowledge than if you had simply been handed a wad of cash. ~heather
ReplyDeleteNow you should do some more learning and contact these guys http://www.usafa.org/Heritage/ClassRings_Lost Maybe they can figure out who lost that ring.
ReplyDeleteNice story. You brought the tooth too, I love it.
ReplyDelete