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The Family Business: How to Play Business at Home

By Jamie Brown January 6, 2015
Kids are natural entrepreneurs. Consider the classic toddler grocery store, make-believe cash register or pretend lemonade stand.

Bea is for Business encourages innovative activities to "play business" at home as a family as a way to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs. They recently shared three ways to “play business” and some great conversation starters.

1. Let’s Shop!

Let your kids set out "merchandise" for a homemade store. The merchandise can be set out on a couch or the floor. Then, as a customer, bring money to purchase items from your shopkeeper. Kids can have fun trading real money, making price tags, 'pretend' scanning items, and bagging the merchandise after it's been purchased!

Some follow-up questions to talk about as a family: 
  • What was your favorite part of setting up a store?
  • If you could sell anything in the world, what would you sell and where?
2. "Assembling" Dinner

Invite your kids to help put dinner together via an assembly line! Some of our favorite dishes to try are tacos, breaded chicken or enchiladas. For instance, for taco night, assign each child a task to complete — like filling each taco with meat or topping each taco with salsa. As the tacos come together at the end of the assembly line, talk through how each step was important in making the final product. 

Some follow-up questions to talk about as a family:
  • What would happen if one person didn’t do his or her job on the dinner assembly line?
  • Did any jobs take longer than others? Which ones? Why? 
3. Let’s Catalog It!

Arts and crafts can fuel productive business conversations. Take several old magazines, and let your child cut out pictures of items he or she wants to put in a catalog to sell. Glue pictures on each page and staple multiple pieces together for a larger catalog. Under each chosen item, ask your child to put a price. Older kids can be challenged to find prices online and cross-compare!

Some follow-up questions to talk about as a family:
  • Why do companies or brands use catalogs? Why are some in the mail versus online?
  • Do you think some items would be more expensive than others? Why?
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To keep learning about business as a family check out their innovative book series, visit www.beaisforbusiness.com.