14 Fun Business Activities for Kids to Spark their Business Spirit
Teaching children about entrepreneurship and business from a young age can give them a valuable head start on skills like creativity, problem solving, communication and money management. With some simple, engaging business activities for kids tailored to their interests and abilities, you can spark their entrepreneurial spirit right at home.
This post shares 14 fun DIY business activities for kids, as well as games and tips to introduce key entrepreneurship concepts to children. From setting up toy product stores and service ventures to hosting neighbourhood events, these activities make learning business basics an absolute blast!
14 Fun DIY Business Activities for Kids
1. Neighbourhood Goodie Store
What child doesn’t love setting up and selling sweets and treats? Use this universal interest to teach basic retail business ideas.
Help your child create price tags and promotional signs for their makeshift corner shop. You can even give them the choice of whether to host a fixed shop or a mobile shop on the move through the neighbourhood! Guide them to think about margins, inventory and displays. You can even introduce money handling when neighbours or friends purchase goodies. Extend the learning by getting your kid to calculate profits and restock supplies.
2. Toy Upcycling Service
This is a great intro to production and problem solving! You can task your child with taking old toys and household items and upcycling them into something “new”. For example, a cot could become a doll’s bed. Building blocks may be stacked into a robot figure.
Not only is this one of the fun business activities for kids, it teaches creativity and innovation, but also working to client requests. Ask family members to submit “orders” for your child to fulfil for a small fee.
3. Pet Care Enterprise
Is your child passionate about animals? A pet sitting, walking or grooming venture enables kids to turn this passion into a business serving neighbours. Younger kids could draw up cute flyers or create photo pet portfolios to advertise services, while older children can schedule bookings and manage the customer experience.
Use websites like fiverr to find talented graphic designers who can bring more ambitious flyer design ideas to life in a professional way that will impress prospective customers.
With your supervision for safety and payments, they can develop responsibility while helping local pet owners. This will also naturally develop strong math, scheduling and social skills in the process.
4. Event Planning Business
Are your kids party lovers? Unleash your child’s inner event coordinator by having them host celebrations for family or community occasions. Guide them through key planning stages – concept/theme, guest management, budget, scheduling, marketing and execution.
Perhaps they’ll host a cute Valentine’s Day soirée for relatives with DIY decor and goodie bags? Or a spooky Halloween party for friends complete with themed treats, games and costumes? Such events build leadership, logistics and financial skills from end to end.
5. Lemonade and Bake Stand
These are classic DIY venture business activities most kids will love! Although simple, setting up a drink and treats stand teaches so many critical business lessons – calculating quantities and costs, creating signage, attracting and serving customers and handling payments.
Let kids choose fun recipes and funky names for their stand. Guide them to forecast demand and manage leftovers/wastage. Using a cashbox introduces money concepts too. Add reusable or recycled cups and napkins, and it builds eco-awareness!
6. Entrepreneur Card Game
Help kids grasp business basics like start-up costs, cash flow, profits and problem solving through simple card and board games with play money.
Monopoly Junior teaches buying properties and collecting rent. The Entrepreneur Game encourages creativity and imagination where players must decide what type of business they want and give it a name, whilst also deciding what products to offer.
Or why not make up your own game that takes kids through the steps of starting and running a company? Add creative touches like coming up with company names or designing prototype products.
We at Finabee have developed some digital workbooks to help your kids start their own home business and learn through practical activities including visiting a local store and researching websites to learn about web design. You can see our workbooks here in our Etsy store!
Find experts in areas of the business your children need help with on websites like fiverr. Part of being an entrepreneur is quickly realising that you’re not going to be good at everything and you can hire others who have more knowledge than you to do the job properly!
Why not start their business by hiring a logo designer to turn your child’s drawn designs into reality?
7. Business Model Canvas
While this may be strategic since it is a management tool used by real-world startups and corporations, you may want to apply this, to enable you to map out key building blocks of a business on one page. While detailed, you can simplify elements to apply the Business Model Canvas game to a child’s venture idea.
Guide them through each component like identifying their customers, costs and how they can make profit. Not only does this build business acumen, it develops vital critical thinking, analysis and increases their evaluation capabilities.
Ps. The Strategyzer Series is an amazing collection of books by company Strategyzer, highly regarded by adult entrepreneurs around the world!
8. Sales Role Play
Kids can improve persuasion and communication skills through practicing sales pitches and scenarios. Building confidence speaking “on the job” is invaluable too!
Use stuffed animals or sibling “customers” for your child to promote items, highlight benefits and close deals. Over time, incorporate obstacles like price negotiations or service issues to solve. Only use role play scenarios that align with your kid’s interests – anything from food products to books to toys work a treat.
See our “Elevator Pitch” digital workbook from our Etsy store to help your kids work through activities that will develop this self-confidence and creativity!
9. Entrepreneur Dress Ups
Embodying a role through costumes and props allows free creative expression while building business vocabulary. Dress up as store owners, bankers, accountants, managers, assistants – whatever sparks their imagination and suits their game scenario.
Pair outfits with relevant resources e.g. a cash register and money for a shop owner. Get them networking with other entrepreneur characters or walk them through typical business situations to resolve. This embodiment brings concepts vividly to life. Kids learn best from “doing” and experiencing things whilst using their imagination!
10. Business Fair or Market
Hosting a vibrant marketplace or fair enables kids to showcase their own product or service ventures to family, friends or community. Support them to create flyers, signage and decorations that market their brand.
On the day, allow your kids to manage their own stall, interact with customers, handle financial transactions and learn to drum up business in a competitive environment. The hands-on application boosts entrepreneurial learning in an authentic experiential activity.
Our “Business Fair” digital workbook from our Etsy store helps your kids work through activities like creating flyers and business cards to support them in these sales scenarios! Learning how to talk to your customers and find out their needs is a key skill for a business owner and Finabee’s Business Fair digital product will teach them all about this! Take a look here!
11. Startup Accelerator
For tech-loving kids, develop a mini accelerator program where they work in teams to devise an app/tech-based solution that solves a problem they care about. Guide them through key stages from concept to prototyping eg. brainstorming ideas on post-its, user needs analysis, pitching to “investors”.
Drawing parallels with real accelerators adds authenticity. While advanced, exposing kids to the startup lifecycle and digitisation builds future-ready skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration.
12. Podcast or Video Series
Does your child idolise an entrepreneur? Inspire them to produce a short podcast, video blog or documentary interviewing someone who has started a business. Use your own networks to identify an entrepreneur you know who could help you with this.
Not only does this build research, media production and communication skills, it also gives priceless insights into the entrepreneurship journey straight from the founder’s mouth. Listening first-hand to the risks taken, failures overcome and passion required to succeed is highly motivating and influential.
13. Dragon’s Den
Recreate the popular BBC business pitching show at home! Kids invent prototype products and present them Dragon’s Den style to family members role playing tough investor judges.
They must sell the unique benefits, identify target customers, forecast demand, explain pricing models, outline costs and plea for investment money to turn their idea into a real business.
This tests public speaking ability, business justification skills and handling pressurised questions. It also builds confidence selling ideas and dealing with evaluation and feedback.
14. Learn Through Play
The beauty of adopting fun businesses for kids involves hands-on learning while keeping kids engaged. Creativity makes difficult entrepreneurship concepts relatable and memorable.
Use your child’s interests as a launchpad for tailoring games and DIY projects that bring money, economic and enterprise topics vividly to life. Guide them, step back when appropriate, and let them direct play scenarios themselves for empowered discovery.
Above all, ensure these business activities for kids can spark their curiosity, enjoyment and a sense of achievement. Building vital future life skills like problem solving, communication and responsibility will happen organically along the way.
So How Can Finabee Help?
Here at Finabee we believe that all children should have access to financial and entrepreneurial education to inspire and build good money habits from an early age. Download our Young Entrepreneur Bundle today to equip your kids with the skills to start their own business and make their entrepreneurial dream come true!
Read a bit more about us here and how we plan to raise a generation of finance-savvy children for the future. Click here to learn more about how it works.
You can signup to the waiting list here for our app too to be one of the first to use it and be in with a chance of winning a £50 voucher!
Now that’s a savvy investment!
For more information on this, see our other blog “7 Tips to Helping Your Child Start a Business at Home” here!
