Wednesday, July 23, 2008

This one couldn't wait till sunday

A couple of months ago Johan told me he wanted to paint fake money green. When I asked him why he said he didn't know, but was adamant about doing it. Unfortunately we forgot about it and it never happened. However, today he brought it up again. He thought through all these plans and presented them to me. I realized he wanted to try to use it as real money.

He thought that after it was painted no one would be able to figure out they were fake. Some of the errors of the plan, including the moral issues associated with it, but he seemed bound and determined to go ahead it. He then came up with several different plans to try to make it look real-including photocopying a real dollar bill. He wanted to make 100, 1 dollar bills. I told him you weren't supposed to copy money.

Finally we came up with the plan of tracing the bill. I traced one for him, with just a few of the many details of the bill. I asked him if it looked good; luckily it passed inspection. So we copied the traced bill so he could paint them.

By this point I thought he understood that the only way to get money to spend was by earning it, not making it. Then he got into the nitty-gritty of the project.

He hunted for supplies for 45 minutes, that is a lot of dedication for a 6 yr old. Then he carefully cut out each bill and asked to look at a dollar bill so he could paint it correctly.


As he started painting, he kept telling me not to tell anyone about it. I realized that he still had the intention of passing it off as real money. Luckily he couldn't get the right mix of watercolors to match the color on the bill, and he gave up, so for now our counterfeiting operation has stopped.

3 comments:

AZ Allreds said...

LOL -- my nephew Sam recen;ty made his own $10 bill. He really thought he could go to the store and pass it off. My sister was laughing hard -- she told him that she liked it so much that she would buy it from him...so much for teaching that counterfeit money is bad!

Mrs. C. Yeates said...

Kenny has been making his own money for about a year. He just free hand draws it, so the proportions were off. Tracing is a very clever idea!

CommonMama said...

I think the efforts this 6 year old went through to counterfeit money might be a little scary. I mean what if he were older and actually had the means to do it, he might become successful at it!!!