Enterprise Week!

At my last presentation to Year 5 the teachers invited me to spend the week with the year group helping them carry out a creative Enterprise Week and of course I said yes and was very excited :)

The idea behind the week was that each year group was given a loan of £20 that they could spend on materials and resources, whilst also being allowed to collect donations from the children's family and friends. They were each given a diary to fill in throughout the week starting with some key words that they could relate to and put into practice during the experience. At the end of the week the whole school holds a market where they sell their products to parents, visitors and staff in a competition to gain the most profitable business.

On the first day the children set about learning what they had to achieve and decided on three products that they could hand produce and would be appealing to the people they were going to invite to the market on friday. They decided as a year group on photo frames, wind mobiles and bookmarks and then each child set about designing one of each in their diaries. For homework they were each asked to come up with an idea for a company name and logo.

On Tuesday the children began by putting their homework out on the table and then the teachers ask if I would talk with the class about how I come up with creative ideas and also most importantly how I developed my brand name. The kids then set about walking round the classroom with a a piece of paper and they had to write down their favourite company name and logo... the votes were counted and the company name was decided as 'MONEY FOR ART' with a logo consisting of a pair of scissors with a paint brush either side. 

The winner of the logo was taken to design and make it up on the computer whilst the teachers demonstrated how the children would be creating their products. They then split the class into various groups within the business team such as product designers, accountants and advertisers. I was put with a small selection of children who were going to design the company name that would go with the logo on all the banners, posters and flyers for market day.

The image above and at the top of this post is what we made. The kids collected lots of different crafty things and had great fun putting them together to make letters.

It was quickly Wednesday morning the children had an assembly where each class took it in turns to do a presentation to advertise their company products and to tempt the other children to come to their stall on friday. Once back from assembly we set about splitting the kids into production teams and got cracking making the products. The children decided on the names for each product... Whirly Twirly (wind mobiles), Booktastic (bookmarks) and Snapshots (photo frames).

Thursday was an extremely hectic day, trying to get the kids to settle into working efficiently wasn't easy at all with all their excitement building up for fridays events. It was a challenge getting everything completed in time but we just managed it and it all looked great!

Fridayyyy!The children arrived full of beans and ready for the day and we set straight out onto the playground to set up the stall and before we knew it the visitors were waiting at the gates so we sent a selection of the kids off around the school with arrow signs trying to persuade everyone to come to their stall! The competition had certainly begun but the atmosphere was fantastic...

I took a wander round the market and it was just incredible to view what these children had achieved and learnt in just 5 days... I watched the children take turns to be in charge of our year 5 stall and they did a fantastic job encouraging people to buy their products and handling all the money whilst making sure they wrote receipts to keep track of how much they had made in profit. Within 20 minutes of the visitors arriving year 5 were down to their last few products, it was brilliant for the children to see how popular all their hard work was. They even managed to draw some of the other children in to buying from them!

It was a wonderful morning filled with excitement, enthusiasm and creativity with a touch of friendly competition... so of course year 5 were desperate to find out how much profit they had made and it was a brilliantly deserved £189!! The kids were ecstatic and couldn't wait to start planning what they might put the money towards in terms of new equipment for their class...

It was a a great week and I really enjoyed doing something a bit different... It was lovely to be able to help year 5 when they had done such a lot of work for my projects and to understand how their creative minds work.