You’re Never Too Young to Have Big Ideas – Helping Kids be Kidpreneurs!

~Post made possible by Kidpreneurs~

A few weeks ago my son’s and I had picked up a Lemonade Stand at the Michael’s. We had the idea to do a Lemonade Stand all winter since last year there had been a tremendous heat wave in the Midwest and there are always so many people walking and jogging by our road. The idea was great, we were having a lot of fun coloring our Lemonade Stand, but we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. Actually, my teen and I were debating for over an hour on the price of a cup of lemonade.

Let’s fast-forward a little…

I was given the opportunity to review a new book called Kidpreneurs – Parent/Teacher Guide. The first thing I notice when I open the book was this:

Activity 4.1: Emma and Jack’s Business Plan for a Lemonade Stand! Now we were on to something!

Kidpreneurs Parent/Teacher Guide offers over 100 activities, worksheets and instructions that help you guide your children (or students) in their big ideas for small business and/or charity ventures. In our case, it was a great tool for me to use to help my sons formulate their idea for the Lemonade Stand, what they wanted to use it towards and what they hoped to achieve with it. As the first sort of “business venture” my children have ever done, it was nice to have a guide that gave them an encouraging yet practical viewpoint.

The activities allow the kids to look at it from the viewpoint of Emma and Jack and their business plan and answer questions to get a better understanding, afterward it has the children write out what they would do and the ideas for their own business plan. Having Emma and Jack’s idea as an example really helps ground their imagination and gives insight into how to go about creating realistic ideas.

One of the first things in Kidpreneurs Parent/Teacher Guide is a section discussing what kind of jobs your kids can do at their age and as you can see, chores are included! It helps kids realize the potential, how to think outside of the box and also to create goals that are not just “make money”. What are your kids hoping to achieve? Do they have something in mind that they are wanting? And what is the best way to go about earning in their age group?

We’re still coloring our Lemonade Stand, but after going through the activities with my teen (and in some parts my tot) we have a better idea of what we are looking to do, how to go about it and also what we hope to achieve. There is a section on Children Helping Other Children and after reading it both of them decided that they wanted to put the effort into creating a Lemonade Stand that helped another child. My husband and  I helped them look up a local charity that is hoping to raise enough money for a boy with severe allergies who needs a specialized dog so he can go outside to parks like other kids.

You could say that Kidpreneurs not only helped us in our Lemonade Stand adventure, but in the end it also taught my kids that they can do more than just “make money”, they can make a difference in another person’s life.