There’s having a lemonade stand, and then there’s having a “Lemonade Day stand”.  What’s the difference?  By participating in the Lemonade Day entrepreneurship program your child will gain invaluable life lessons that will change how they think and prepare them for life.  But they’ll be having so much fun, they won’t know they’re actually learning.  Here are 5 ways that Lemonade Day will help your child succeed.

1) Working towards goals

A key part of Lemonade Day is personal goal setting:  What do you want to do with your profit?  How do you want to spend, save and share your earnings?  Children lean how to think about what an appropriate goal might be and how to create a plan to reach that goal.  And if your child doesn’t reach their goal, it’s a fabulous opportunity to review what the goal was and why they didn’t reach it—how would they do it differently next time and what did they learn from the experience?

2) Building EQ (Emotional Quotient)

Engaging with customers, making eye contact, smiling and answering questions might feel like a tall order at first for a child.  But the more they practice at their Lemonade Day stand, they better they will get at it.  These are EQ building exercises that let your children try out different ways of interacting with people to create a rapport and ultimately sell more lemonade! 

3) Math has a real purpose

It’s one thing to work out math problems in the classroom or while doing homework.  It’s a completely different animal to see how math actually works when a child builds and runs their own lemonade stand.  When developing their budget and business plan, children calculate everything from projected revenue, to cost per cup and profit per cup.  By putting math to use in a fun, experiential way, children can get excited about math and begin to connect the dots as to why it’s important.

4) The value of money

Until you’ve earned your first dollar, it can be hard to grasp how hard it is to actually make money.  Kids who participate as entrepreneurs in Lemonade Day, experience first hand all of the planning, budgeting and sweat-equity that goes into starting and running a business and making a profit.  This can help them better appreciate the value of money, and that ultimately it’s easier to spend money than make it.

5) Make your own opportunities

While we hope that our children will never struggle to find employment, the economy has its ups and downs and there are no guarantees.  Sharing with your child the steps and skills involved in starting their own businesses gives them the toolset to make their own opportunities. Knowing how to make your own money is one skill that everyone should have.

About Lemonade Day

Lemonade Day is a non-profit dedicated to teaching every child across North America the business and financial skills that are the key ingredients of entrepreneurship. By learning these skills early in life, children will be better prepared to be successful, financially healthy adults. Through our fun, hands-on program Kids K-5 are empowered to start their very own business—a lemonade stand—and experience the feeling of earning real money, using 100% of their profit to spend, save and share based on their own goals.

Lemonade Day is in 62 cities throughout the United States. Over the past 10 years, we have served more than 1 million kids in our kidpreneur programs and in 2016 alone, 101,000 kids participated in Lemonade Day.

Visit LemonadeDay.org to learn how to participate in Lemonade Day in your city.