Enterprising kids

So we had handmade Christmas cards - beautifully packaged; Christmas candles - made from tumblers, tea-lights, a bit of doily and ribbon (remember these - 27p to make - for sale at £1.50); Peppermint creams packaged in handmade papier-mache pots wrapped in cellophane; polystyrene snowman with ear muffs to hang on your trees; home-made sachets of hot chocolate in cinammon, mint and orange flavours; hand-painted baubles, bookmarks and badges.
The children worked industriously and feverishly to get their products made and ready in time to sell. They decorated their stalls and as each stall got bolder, other stalls were buying last minute bits of ribbon from me!
The stalls were ready, the children were on edge, the doors were flung open at 3:10 pm. By 3:30 pm every item was sold even paperchains used to decorate the tables. The peppermint cream group had even raffled off their last tin of condensed milk at 20p a raffle ticket!
One child said to me "It was like a market place - I couldn't see any of the other stalls, I didn't have time to look!"
What a great success!
The next day we totted up our totals, the children put all their information onto spreadhseets and worked out their profits. The smallest profit was £14 and the highest £35!! That was those candles I told you about!
Brilliant experience, super learning and such fun!

Using ipads to make Christmas cards

I need to quickly interrupt the enterprise project to show off some art from my class. At Christmas we usually created our own Christmas cards based on Paul Klee's 'Two dromedaries and a donkey'. This year we used the app 'Brushes' to create the background colours and then the children either added the camels and donkey by hand or with the app (which was tricky as you can't do particularly fine lines). Nevertheless, they are beautiful and I'm sure all the families will be thrilled to receive their cards this year. Please have a look and take some time to comment for the children's sake. Next post shortly about our hugely successful enterprise sale!

Enterprise progress

So the children are fully involved in their projects. They have had a dad in this week to talk about budgets and planning their profit margins, this was really useful for all of us because we (the staff) decided to charge them for petrol and rent including electricity etc - Mwahahah! Only £1 of their £10 budget, we are kind :)

Today one child from each group went shopping with two members of staff. They followed a shopping list and bought items they couldn't buy at school. It has all been very exciting! They are now creating advertisments for the digital signage, website and walls around the school. They will be slipping fliers into the school production programmes. I have no idea at this point which group will win, but the learning has been tremendous. If you have any good ideas, please comment for the kids, they love to hear from people other than me!