Teaching Your Kids About Business

For the past several years I have taken time each summer to take my kids through some business building activities. I love the self motivated lemonade stand that is a summer staple for kids and I wanted to be intentional guide my kids a little bit more with it. 

One of the most foundational ways we can do that with a lemonade stand (or any other such stand) is to at the very least help our kids understand that there are costs involved in business. A simple way to do that is to charge them for the lemonade concentrate and cups! 

Take them to the store with you and purchase your supplies. Have them add up the total spent and divide it by the number of cups of lemonade they can make with the supplies. This will give them their cost per unit and then they can price their lemonade higher than that so that they won't take a loss. 

As I created lemonade stands, Ice Cream Float Shops and Art businesses with my kids I realized there was so many fantastic and authentic learning opportunities within this realm of entrepreneurship. 

I started searching for resources to use with my kids to teach the fundamentals of business and even in the expansive land of Pinterest - I could barely find anything and I certainly couldn't find anything that was comprehensive.

So each year I just kept adding various activities to our summer project. Creating logos, developing a brand, hand drawing and then reproducing flyers to deliver, cost of business work pages, understanding profits, etc. As a business owner myself I know that after a quality product/service, marketing will make or break my business. I took the opportunity to go through so many ins and outs of marketing with my kids. 

One customer at a lemonade stand asked my son how they decided on their cups and the straws with mini umbrellas on them. To which he replied, "Well, my mom says people like to buy cute stuff so we made them cute."

Such a proud mamma moment! He also knows from experience that people are going to pay more for a cute polka dot cup with a mini umbrella than they are for a styrofoam cup. 

After a few years of creating these activities with my kids I decided to start to compile them all into a course for youth and families and thus BEY - Business and Entrepreneurship for Youth and Families was born! Creating curriculum has always been one of my favourite parts of teaching. I also love design and am a photographer so it was truly a project that was able to incorporate all of my passions!

This year my kids created watercolour notecards to sell in sets. They created a name "HK Creative", a logo, designed packaging and created a multimedia campaign to market their work. 

When getting my education degree there was a motto in the teacher community that we joked around with regarding resources "borrow, beg, or steal". Now we never actually stole people's work so don't worry but in teaching there are always things you could create, customize or develop but also very little time to do those things - so in essence it's really "help each other and share resources". 

I couldn't find the business resources I was looking for so I created them and now I am sharing them with you! And by YOU I mean anyone with youth in their life. You don't have to be a homeschooler to use this, I think it is great for parents to work through with their kids at home. I also feel it works in a classroom setting for teachers to use and would also be a really great enrichment course for your students who are always done early and looking for a meaningful way to use their extra time. 

BEY- Business and Entrepreneurship for Youth

BEY is a comprehensive course for youth and families to work through. The course is broken down into 6 sections where course material can be printed or worked through online and also includes a 30 page Business Portfolio to be printed out. 

https://www.moniquewillms.com/product-page/business-and-entrepreneurship-course-for-youth-bey

The course work will sequentially take you through all the learning involved in creating your own business and understanding things like cost of doing business, branding your product or service and marketing. At the end of each section students are directed to the Business Portfolio and led through pen and paper and extra activities involved in developing their business. 

This course has a vast appeal as the solid principles apply to everything from a child’s first lemonade stand, to a babysitting business, to creating a one of a kind product and selling it. I’ve used all of these activities when developing the businesses that provide for my family!

In this PDF download (57 pages) you will find:

BEY Business course (27 pages) with sections including:

Introduction
Products and Services
Cost of Doing Business
Branding
Marketing
Reflection
Printable Business Portfolio (30 pages)
Certificate of Completion


By the end of the course students will have gone through the learning and process of completing a full business plan and putting it into action. It is truly a one of a kind course that is simple, to the point and full of images and engaging activities. 
So if you're looking for a comprehensive, no prep for you way to teach your kids about business check out the link HERE !