Tag Archives: learn

Practical Money Skills Entrepreneurship Teaches – 12 More Reasons Why!

Posted on • Author: Deb Maubach • 0 Comments
Deb Maubach started homeschooling her 4 entrepreneurs in 1983 before homeschooling was popular and founded Homeschool Entrepreneur in 2006 before entrepreneurial education was popular, too. She’s also considering Greenland for retirement in the future before it becomes popular.

Financial literacy is so much more than simply knowing how to manage, spend, and protect the money you earn. It’s having the confidence and ability to know how to create income, too. Entrepreneurial education not only teaches how to create an income, but all the skills that involve managing that income, too!

Encouraging your child/teen to explore entrepreneurship while you still have input into their lives does not have a down side. Some parents fear it will encourage greed or other negative traits in young students. We disagree. Now is the time to help your children develop the mindset of serving others through meeting needs in the marketplace. This can be beneficial whether your child is an employee or an employer! Most importantly, you have input into how they view business and the values that accompany it.

It also gives them opportunity to earn money, learn responsibility, and spend quality time with you! Like any class they are required to take in school, even if they aren’t currently interested in entrepreneurship, the practical knowledge they’ll come away with is rarely surpassed. Life is full of twists and turns, so having the knowledge of how to start and operate their own business can come in VERY handy!

 

Learning to think like an entrepreneur can change your perspective to what really happens in the marketplace. So many businesses are started with the false assumption that working for yourself is easier than working for someone else. Huge amounts of money are thrown to the wind everyday on businesses that closed within a year because they weren’t thought through or didn’t know the basics of managing a small business. Equip your child to avoid these pitfalls!

In addition to the benefits and skills we’ve already gone over in the last few articles like budgeting, saving and resourcefulness, there are a multitude of other reasons to add entrepreneurship to your curriculum:

  1. They will be a better employee. When they understand an entrepreneur’s perspective and what they need from their employees, your young adult will be a much better employee. No amount of formal education can provide that!
  1. The value of education and training. On a similar note, if your young entrepreneur has had much experience with running a small business, they quickly learn how much they DON’T know! This can help them see how important further education really is and often gives focus to what they want to study. (!)
  1. Managing money even when there is none! Learning how to manage cash flow when there isn’t a fixed income. Many jobs have fluctuating incomes that are challenging to manage. Experience with how to do this can be invaluable.
  1. Bookkeeping skills and the importance of keeping good records. It can actually become fun when the accounting is revealing their profits! They’ll also learn how critical it is to have those records when they have to file taxes! We’ve also seen how this had led to a new interest in math skills. Honest!
  1. The importance of managing your time. So many people think if you run your own business you can take off anytime you want. While you may be the master of your own schedule, there is always so much to do, time off is almost laughable! You can help them learn balance in this area, too.
  1. Opportunities to minister to others. Business owners are expected to participate in community events, but being a witness to your employees, suppliers and customers is a way to touch others’ lives on a daily basis.
  1. Learning the value of integrity and trustworthiness in the marketplace and life. Repeat business is highly affected by how much your customers trust you. However unfortunate, the value of integrity in the marketplace is usually learned through experiencing the effects of dealing with suppliers and employees that are NOT trustworthy or reliable!
  1. The value of investing. As a business owner, the reality of the saying “It takes money to make money” is made apparent. Whether it’s buying goods to resell or equipment to do a job more efficiently, entrepreneurs learn quickly how important it is to invest their profits wisely.
  1. Consumer education and protection. Our son learned quickly that everyone cannot be trusted. Your entrepreneur will learn how to recognize and avoid the pitfalls of scams and what to do if they do become a victim. They’ll also learn that not all marketing claims are what they should be, and how to maintain integrity in their own advertising.
  1. Colleges love to see entrepreneurship on applications! It shows them that your student has initiative, responsibility, and can think outside of the box. Often it can give your child the advantage they need to get into the college of their choice. There are many schools that now offer entrepreneurship programs as a major!
  1. They’ll learn the vast online marketing resources that are now available to everyone. Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Ebay, Etsy, and other venues have leveled the playing field for small business owners. There is a wealth of opportunity that any marketer can use for their business at a very low cost. This will also give you a chance to discuss the importance of social responsibility, too!
  1. Teaching values. Last, but definitely not least, teaching your child entrepreneurship while you still have some input into their life gives you opportunity to infuse values into how business should be conducted. Integrity is sorely lacking in much of what we see in the marketplace, and you can make a difference in the future of entrepreneurship!

I’m sure you could think of many other reasons that entrepreneurship is a valuable addition to any student’s curriculum. If you aren’t sure where to start, I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting Google! Our website is another resource that we started with homeschool families in mind.

Many businesses can be started with very little money, but I’ll be honest when I tell you that it does take a significant investment of time! However, we believe that as investments go, there are few that have a better return! It’s a priceless gift you can give your children that they’ll have for the rest of their lives!

Having Fun with Phonics!

Posted on • Author: Liz Sedley • 0 Comments
Liz Sedley, the creator of Dyslexia Gold, a suite of neuroscience based computer programs to help your dyslexic child read, write and spell. Liz has 3 children with combinations of Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and Aspergers. She spent 10 years researching these conditions, and what caused them, before creating her first computer program to help her daughter.

The best way to teach your child to read is by teaching them phonics and phonological awareness.

Here are 10 fun games to get you started that you can play over the holidays.

  1. I Spy

Understanding that words are made up of individual sounds is a very important pre-reading skill. The traditional game, I Spy, is a great way to introduce them to this concept. Use the letter sound rather than the name and/or using the combination of letter sounds, such as ch, sh, etc. (Example: I Spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘buh’.)

  1. Reverse I Spy

Instead of guessing the object from the first letter, how about asking them to say the first letter sound of a word. When they can do this you can get them to do the last sound, and then the middle sound. This introduces and practices phonics and encourages the child to hear the individual letter sounds.

  1. Color Rhymes

Have some different color objects in a bowl and ask the child to take the object that rhymes with various words. It can be the object that rhymes or the color. For example, red for bed, blue for flew, jar for car. You can make up ‘silly’ rhymes using the objects as prompts.

  1. Change the Letter

How many words can you make by changing or adding the first letter sound? Ear – tear – fear – dear – year. To expand this, create a letter ladder of the first letters and slide the ear part of the word up and down so the child sees the word as well.

  1. What rhymes with…?

Use a ball to pass between each other. The first person chooses a word and passes the ball. When you have the ball you have to come up with a word that rhymes with the starting word.

  1. Lucky Phonics Dip

Use flash cards with the letters and combination of letter sounds in a bag or box. Take turns pulling out cards, sounding them out and thinking of a word that starts with that letter. To extend this activity, you could create a silly story using the words that you think of.

  1. Guess Who with Phonics

Replace the people on the Guess Who board with items. Each player asks whether the item starts with the letter sound(s) and/or rhymes with words, before narrowing it down further (if necessary).

  1. Scavenger Hunt

Put flash cards containing letters and letter combinations into a bag. Your child picks one and then has 2 minutes to find 5 things in the room that start with that letter.

  1. Phonics Hide and Seek

Instead of giving clues, give the child a letter card. They then look for objects that start with that letter sound. Underneath one object will be the next letter sound. Keep going for as many items as you can!

  1. Phonics Hopscotch

Create a hopscotch board using letters instead of numbers. Each time the child hops onto one of the squares, they say the letter sound or a word that starts with that sound. Like traditional hopscotch, get them to skip the square with the marker.

Learning phonics and phonological awareness are crucial skills your child needs to read. With these games, they won’t even realize they are learning!

5 Practical Money Skills Teen Entrepreneurs Learn – Thrift, Resourcefulness, and the MacGyver Syndrome

Posted on • Author: Deb Maubach • 0 Comments
Deb Maubach started homeschooling her 4 entrepreneurs in 1983 before homeschooling was popular and founded Homeschool Entrepreneur in 2006 before entrepreneurial education was popular, too. She’s also considering Greenland for retirement in the future before it becomes popular.

Do you remember the TV show ‘MacGyver’ from the late 80’s? Over the years that name has become legendary, personifying resourcefulness. Armed with his trusty Swiss Army knife, MacGyver would save the world weekly with everyday items like paper clips, rubber bands or whatever it was he could find. He could turn almost anything into a solution for his current predicament.

Given the right opportunity, kids left to their own resources can be surprisingly creative and MacGyver-like. Thrifty may not be a word you commonly use to describe your teenager, especially if they haven’t had to work for their needs or wants. Entrepreneurship is one way your teen can develop MacGyver-like resourcefulness.

Any entrepreneur will tell you that running even the smallest business will force out your inner MacGyver! Creative problem solving, making due with what’s on hand, and stretching a limited budget, are just a few acquired survival skills for entrepreneurs!

Your young entrepreneur may not be raiding the cleaning closet to make Russian superglue (a trademark MacGyver creation), but with their limited budget they’ll become very clever at making due with what they have on hand.

My oldest son discovered at a very young age what could be accomplished with a small amount of money and a lot of resourcefulness. He’s even been accused of being thrifty to a fault! (the nerve!) To my knowledge, he’s never watched the TV show MacGyver, but to this day at the age of 31, he’s been called ‘MacGyver’ more than once.

Start Them Young!

When our kids were younger, one of our favorite things to do as a family was shopping garage sales. Our oldest son was especially fond of finding treasures in the rough, and would often purchase non-working mowers and electronics with his own money. When he would share his plans to dismantle the items so he could learn how to fix them, people would often donate the items to him because they thought his ambition was cute. What would you say to a 9-year-old boy negotiating a price on an item that didn’t even work? Little did they know how much their charity would teach him!

In the beginning, he didn’t have a clue how to fix any of these items and neither did his parents. Of course, our eclectic homeschool household loved his new hobby and made every effort to encourage it. We designated a work-space, some basic tools, and gave him plenty of time to work on his projects. He found several people in our church quite willing to help him. To our surprise, he actually fixed many of his purchases and resold them, only to reinvest that money in more broken treasures to fix.

Working with Change

Several years later, our move to a more rural area changed our young entrepreneur’s source of items to repair. Being less familiar with the area coupled with fewer garage sales per square mile and rising gas prices, our garage sale habit became impractical.

Fortunately, this didn’t hinder my son’s ambitions. As he grew older, he discovered Ebay and Craigslist, teaching himself how to effectively use them to move his hobby into a profitable business. Naturally, this came with some hard lessons, usually from people that took advantage of his inexperience and good nature. These experiences taught him many lessons not found in any book. He quickly learned what worked, what didn’t work, and resourceful ways to make the best of his mistakes.

This was the fruit I’d always hoped homeschooling would develop. My son had found a way to transform the book knowledge we offered at the kitchen table into tangible life skills. He figured out how to use a little money, find a need in the marketplace, and a way to fill that need using whatever he had on hand. He didn’t get rich doing it, but made more than he would have at a part time job and learned much more in the process!

This became the seed of his entrepreneurial journey as an adult. He moved on to repairing bigger and bigger items, working his way into his own car before he had a license to drive! Eventually, finding and fixing up cars became his passion. Sourcing vehicles to fix and resell became a full time income and he was soon running his own business. At the age of 24 he had his car dealer’s license (no small endeavor we found out!). Seven years later, he continues to successfully run this business selling good used cars and trucks. His MacGyver-like personality combined with hard work enabled him to create his own career and also jobs for others. To our delight, he’s the king of finding amazing deals of all kinds and his family loves the side benefits!

Start Simple

You can help your child get started in the same way with a little creative guidance enabling them to find or make something they can resell. Teach them how to buy low, add value, and sell at a profit. Sometimes items only need a good cleaning to increase their worth. Show them where to research prices and the best places for reselling. Smart phones are terrific resources for this! The holidays are a great time to test the waters with their wares.

Warn them ahead of time they may not make a profit at the beginning. Discuss with them possible ways to do better next time, listening carefully to all their ideas. Always try to encourage them and don’t let them give up! Remind them that success isn’t always measured by money. You may need to help them keep records of all their income and expenses so they can see what does and doesn’t work.

I don’t need to tell you that teens rarely choose to be thrifty or resourceful on their own. Research indicates making life too easy for your children can make it more difficult for them later in life. They will need you to get started! It’s always time well invested and will teach your teens skills they’ll have forever.

There are many other ways to learn resourcefulness and thrift without binge watching old MacGyver episodes. Let your children help you plan and search for the best prices on your next vacation or large purchase. Involve your kids in as many financial decisions as possible. You might be surprised how creative and thrifty they can be! My daughter would clip coupons and match them to sales for me and now she’s one of those ‘super-couponers’ that saves $400-$600 on groceries every month!

Together Always Makes It More Fun!!

Working together and making it fun will maximize their learning and resourcefulness. It’s a great way to spend time together. Who knows? Their new hobby may even become a profitable business and their future career!