Kiker Market Day

I wasn’t aware of this till Avni came to 2nd grade, market day at Kiker Elementary is 1 day in December when all 2nd graders put their entrepreneurship skills to test by making things and selling them. Ok, they don’t make/sell individually but in groups of 4. Parents and school provide the supplies, kids do the work under the guidance of the teacher and parent volunteer and they get to decide the price. Who are the customers? kids, parents of kids and teachers in the school are the customers for the market day. All proceeds will go to charity, not exactly sure who and how they pick the charities to support.

Considering all the kids in grade 2 are between the ages of 7-8, I wasn’t really sure as to what to expect from this big group but I was amazed at the talent that was showcased during market day. The entire cafeteria was filled with items for sale and by the time I entered at around 15mins after the sale started some of the kids had already put out sold out signs. There were fire breathing dragons, toy cars, book marks, Christmas ornaments, stress balls, Mancala games and so on.

All items were priced $1-$3, come to think of it I don’t remember seeing anything for greater than $3. Best part, kids got to decide the prices and they got to decide when they want to drop the price and so on.

Last I heard from Avni's class teacher, the second graders made an overall profit of $3100. If one thinks in terms dollars/sqft in 1 hour it is unbelievable. 

I am very happy to report all the things that Avni's class made were all sold out before the end of the market day. It definitely was a good combination or in engineering terms a resonance of kids talents and teachers encouragement. Great job Comets. 

My only gripe, why not do this for all the grades? why only second graders? :) 

ps: sorry I can’t post pictures due to privacy reasons :) 

Girl scout market place

Took Avni the other day to her second Girl Scout market place. Last year we went as buyers only and this year around we went in as sellers/buyers. For those who do not know, the market place is where the different troops of Girl Scouts put together items like arts/crafts/snacks for sale as a group to raise money for charity. Needless to say both the shoppers and the shop owners are all kids from Girl Scouts. I really do not know the max age limit of troops participating. The total event is about an hour to hour and fifteen minutes. 

The market place things like Chex mix snacks, Christmas tree ornaments, candies, simple games and one troop was selling marble necklaces. The interesting ones like the Tic Tac Toe and ornaments were on the expensive side with prices at $3 per item. While the simple ones like snacks were for $1. Needless to say the older kids had made more complex ones while the younger ones went for easy ones.

If you have ever heard Dave Ramsey on either radio or on podcasts you definitely would have heard him say “adults devise a plan and follow and children do what feels good. I could relate to what that meant watching the kids shopping with limited budget and going from stall to stall to see if they can buy the item sold or rather if they had the money to afford the same. Needless to say kids who started with inexpensive items at the start had more money to spare vs the other way round.  

About half way through the event some of the stalls started dropping prices to make the sale happen and some started giving buy one get one offers. One example I have is of the Tic Tac Toe game which started off at $3 per item eventually dropped to $2 per and with fifteen minutes to go went to $1 per item. Even at that price they still had a lot of items to be sold. Avni felt that it was not fair, for she had bought the game at $3 and if only she had waited she could have gotten the game for $1. and $2 to spare. I wonder if this is what we in the real world call bargain buy? But she corrected herself and said the kids have put in a lot of efforts to make the game and $3 is the fair price.

This begged the question, would they have been at an advantage to start off selling at $2? (Instead of starting at $3?). Even though I was apprehensive at the start but upon closer examination, I feel for the creative work and the effort involved the item probably would have sold on Etsy for $4 a piece. The market place they were aiming for is a limited window, limited audience and with very limited budget. Tic Tac Toe was just one example another one was the candy cane chocolate sledge which also was having similar effect.

Maybe that's the lesson for them? For Avni, I told her next time around it may be worth while to wait for sometime before making a buy :).