My Top Secret Evil Spreadsheet

Top Secret Mastermind kinda stuff. I kept a top secret spreadsheet during this last school year — well, a lot of secret spreadsheets, but this one was the most fun!

I had compiled a list of “Life Events”, decisions and consequences, for nearly 25 different scenarios. I had sat down, thought through my life, my friends’ lives, my parents’ lives — anything and everything that could happen in life — and listed it all out. Then, I would open the spreadsheet periodically during the year and dump a catastrophic life event in the lap of all my high schoolers! I definitely had more fun than

$9,000 Garden? Just another weekend…

I just made a $9,000 pallet planter from reclaimed wood, nails, trash bags and planting material!

Not bad for a DIY novice with next to no tools! While this might not seem like much, let me explain my math I borrowed from the master money man, Mr. Money Mustache.

As you can see, it’s banged together pretty crudely…but that’s the idea. I nailed through the patio slats (don’t tell my landlord if you know ’em) so it sits at a slight angle for more sunlight. The pallet came from a stranger we met while cruising neighborhoods looking for…well, lonely pallets. So we don’t know the pallet’s history, and we don’t know what it hauled. That’s why I stapled trash bags inside each box as a liner to seal out any chemicals from the wood.

Now, spending two hours out of my weekend making this planter was well worth it just for the mere fact of the use of manly tools and nails and splinters and smashed toes and thumbs. But saving money is (almost) even more fun!

A Communist Lemonade Stand?

I had a friend in seminary who explained government philosophies to his kids by using a lemonade stand as an example…over-simplified, but highly effective. So of course I had to steal this for my World Geography and Consumer Math students!

We were studying national governments in geography and economics in math, so I used the lemonade stand to combine the two. Here’s how it went.

Capitalist, Socialist, Communist

I had three groups picked randomly, and I told them each they were going to run a lemonade stand. I labeled one group capitalist, one group socialist and one group communist.

I asked each group if they would like to sell lemonade or make up their own drink. The capitalists chose to create their own out of pickle juice or something like that and call it some great, goofy name. I put it on the whiteboard.

Group socialist made up a great new drink, but I wrote “lemonade” on the board. “Sorry, but we need you to make lemonade,” I told them.

Want to have fun? Give ’em consequences!

What if you paid your students to do their assignments? What if every point they earned in your class was a dollar they could spend, save or give away? Think they would be a little more motivated? Of course!

Now, I didn’t give my students real money, but you should have seen what happened when I handed them their paychecks!