Coin sorter

Julien recently got a coin sorter from the Scholastic book club (part of an order he placed with Kathy when she was visiting) and he loves it. He has taken all the change he can find, from the coin bowl, the bottoms of purses, etc, and sorted them and put them in rolls of 2$, 5$, etc. He still doesn't quite understand how change works, but it is begining to make sense and is very interesting and clearly important in the world.

The other day, Richard picked up Julien's back pack in the morning and it was incredibly heavy. After fishing around in the various pockets he found a sock full of rolls of change. What was Julien doing? He wanted to go to the book fair at school with his friend Isaac to find a book on spying. Why? They want to spy on the bullies. Who are the bullies, you might ask? Any one that has done him wrong recently. Usually someone who has been a friend, and probably will be a friend again.

We explained to Julien that he was too young to go to the book fair alone and that he could not bring his rolls of coins with him to school. As you can imagine he was quite disappointed. I offered to take him to school early so we could look at the books in the book fair, but he declined. He wanted to go with Isaac, without adults.