Did you ever set up a lemonade stand as a kid? Or help sell cookies at a bake sale? You might have fond memories of licking your sugary fingers and counting up quarters as you sat outdoors on a sunny summer morning, manning your stand. While it may seem simple, this sort of activity is the beginnings of entrepreneurship, a valuable set of life skills.

As a homeschooling parent, you are constantly looking for the best ways to teach your child. It’s easy to get caught up in grade level requirements and focus solely on the essentials of reading, writing, and math.

But, adding entrepreneurship to your homeschool curriculum will add tons of relevant life skills while still giving your kids plenty of practice in the essential academic areas. Curious to learn more? Below, discover 12 reasons you should add entrepreneurship to your homeschool curriculum:

1. Entrepreneurs Are Happier

One study of Wharton MBA grads showed that the happiest cohort of alumni were those who were running their own business. This was regardless of their income. Others included in the study were successful financial firm executives and other high earners. But, even entrepreneurs who were scraping by or had modest incomes outperformed their peers with relation to happiness. 

The study authors believe this outcome may be related to the fact that entrepreneurs have greater control over their time. Although many entrepreneurs work long hours, they can still carve out time whenever necessary for important life events. For example, parents can see their children’s school functions and then work later in the evening. 

So, if happiness is one of your goals for your child, give them a great chance to achieve it through entrepreneurship!

2. Skills Are Transferable

If you give your child the gift of an education in entrepreneurship, the skills won’t be lost in the event that your kid decides not to be an entrepreneur. The skill set, which includes organizational, problem-solving, and out of the box thinking skills, is easily transferable to other job settings and life in general. 

It’s a win-win situation. Either your child learns entrepreneurship skills and uses them to become an entrepreneur, or they learn the skills and use them in their professional or personal life.

3. It’s Academically Challenging

Entrepreneurship provides an academic challenge. Essentially, in entrepreneurship, you create something entirely new. Whether it’s a product or service, your child must create from scratch. And in addition to the main product or service, your child must build a whole business surrounding it.

This relates to the highest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning objectives: creation. You’ll build the foundations of remembering, understanding, applying and analyzing with your child as you go through the process to create the new business.

So many of the learning activities we do may remain in the bottom areas of the taxonomy (like recalling information or answering a word problem). But, with entrepreneurship, you have a way to combine all of your child’s abilities into a high-effort, but high-outcome project that reaches the greatest level of learning.

4. Offers Real World Connections

How much of academic learning truly applies directly to the real world? Sometimes it’s hard for kids to see how the work they do in the classroom relates to real life. But, with entrepreneurship, they’re participating fully in the real world! 

From marketing efforts to talking with clients, making deposits from sales at the bank, and more, entrepreneurship offers lots of real world skills and connections.

5. Can Be Tailored to Curriculum

As a responsible homeschool parent, you’re probably wondering how you’ll stay on track with your curriculum requirements if you add an entrepreneurship project to the mix. It’s only natural to be concerned about your child’s academic progress.

But, luckily, there are plenty of opportunities to tie your entrepreneurship project to other academic areas. Here are some practical ways to do it:

• English: Encourage your child to make their own marketing materials for their business. This can include simple signs, brochures, or even a website! Your child will get plenty of practice in persuasive writing with these tasks.
• Math: Crunching numbers is part of any good, organized business. So, you’ll have to teach your child the basics of accounting. For example, your child will need to keep track of costs and income to see how much they’re earning. In addition, you can teach your child how to balance their bank account and manage cash and other payment methods.
• Science: Chemistry anyone? If your child’s product is a baked good, there are plenty of opportunities for studying the ingredients, interactions, and more. The same is true for a variety of products such as homemade soaps and bath bombs.
• History: You can even tie in lessons in history to your entrepreneurship project if you’d like. Have your child write a report on the history of their product or service. Or, encourage your child to learn about the history of marketing and how advertising has changed over time.
• Music and Art: Is your child musically inclined? Your child can write their own jingle to advertise their business. Or, have your child use their artistic talents to create their own business logo and product packaging designs.

6. Teaches Problem-Solving and Creativity

Entrepreneurship is full of opportunities to learn problem-solving skills and also to practice creativity. With a business, you have to think outside the box. Consider these scenarios:

• What if a product isn’t working well? You may have to adjust it.
• What happens when your business stagnates? How do you find new markets?
• Or, what if your customers need their products to be closer to where they live?

There are a whole range of problems you might face in a business. You can work through these issues with your child, teaching creative thinking and a can-do attitude.

7. Encourages Intangible Skills

Apart from book smarts, intangible skills are important to achieve success in life. From developing independence to learning to deal with stress, meeting deadlines and organizational skills, entrepreneurship projects instill all of these abilities. 

These skills almost invariably appear in any entrepreneurship project. For example, when your child has a deadline to turn in products or services, they’ll have to plan and organize their time to get things done on schedule. In addition, your child will have to learn organizational skills such as keeping track of inventory, including their packaging and marketing materials.

8. It’s Fun!

Most kids are excited about being a business owner. The prospect of making money and  the creativity involved in preparing products and services are big motivators for kids to work hard on the project. Plus, there’s a certain feeling of “grown-upness” that goes along with running a business. That’s another big plus for kids.

So, if you want to include an element in your homeschool curriculum that your child is almost guaranteed to be excited about working on, teach entrepreneurship!

9. Helps Develop Growth Mindset

Stanford University researcher and professor Carol Dweck has discovered an interesting trend. It turns out that if you believe your traits, such as intelligence or talent, are fixed, you won’t be as successful as if you have a growth mindset. The most successful people believe that they can develop and improve their traits through hard work and effort. 

Entrepreneurship offers a great way for you to help your child develop this important growth mindset. You can talk to your child about how their efforts result in positive outcomes. Because entrepreneurship is long-term, it also offers you the chance to discuss how their skills improve over time. For example, you might talk to your child about how their selling skills grew and changed over time when talking to clients about their business.

10. Teaches Branding

In today’s world, branding is important, not just for businesses, but also for individuals. Many people have their own social media sites and website that they use for professional purposes. 

Your child will get a head start into understanding how branding works when they practice branding in their own business. Even with simple “getting the word out” activities like sending emails to family members to advertise the business or putting up a poster at the local library will help your child understand how branding works.

11. You’re Already an Entrepreneur

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the idea of entrepreneurship, remember that you already are an entrepreneur! As a homeschooler, you run your own ship. You teach your kids (most likely without a teaching degree) and create your own school environment. This involves a lot of problem-solving, adjusting, creativity and outside the box thinking.

All you have to do is pass these skills and ideas down to your kids!

12. It Can Be Easy

Using an entrepreneurial kit like Boss Club can simplify how you add entrepreneurship into your curriculum. Each kit comes with everything needed to create a specific small business such as homemade dog treats, luxury bath bombs, or gourmet cake pops. Plus it comes with a 40+ curriculum that explains every step of the process from creating and packaging your product to advertising and making real sales and calculating profit. Click here to shop our business kits or see our curriculum for more information! 

Conclusion

Entrepreneurship is an amazing gift to give to your children. Adding it to your homeschool curriculum will be well worth the effort. It will add depth and interest to your child’s schooling without taking away from academic rigor. Not only will your child have fond memories of their childhood business, they’ll also gain an arsenal of practical skills they can use throughout their life.

So, get started brainstorming! What will your child’s first business be?