Teach the stock market, principles of buying stocks and shares, and have a virtual stock buying competition. Give the children a virtual $1,000 investment, which they must use to invest in companies. Have the children explain why they selected certain stocks and track their investments over a period of time to experience the volatility of the market. The winner will be the person whose stocks performed the best over the period.
Teach business structure and have the children form a company which will organize a fundraiser for a local good cause. The fundraiser could be a car wash, bake sale, school dance or a craft sale. Have the children appoint directors, board members and staff, who will be responsible for ideas, development, marketing, product production and other key elements.
Teach the children the history of companies and how they have progressed and changed over time. Contact local business owners to arrange visits so that the kids can get a behind-the-scenes look at what running these businesses entail. You may even get some business owners to mentor enthusiastic kids particularly interested in their specific businesses.
Form a virtual company and give the kids a specific scenario which will play out each lesson. For example, the children could "run" a car dealership. Each lesson throws a different situation at them. Use situations such as a rival dealership opening down the street, a manufacturer recall damaging sales and marketing a new hybrid vehicle.
Identify successful businesspeople and discuss what makes them successful.
Get the children to share their business aspirations and find ways to help them work toward achieving their future goals.
Recreate BBC television's "Dragons' Den" entrepreneurship investment show. This will be a fun activity as well as a valuable learning opportunity. Select a panel of potential investors from the children and teams of children to come up with inventions for which they need investments. Each team will pitch its idea to the investors, in a five-minute pitch. Each investor will have $100,000 to invest and may divide it as he chooses among the teams. One investor may decide to give all his money to a team with a really great business idea, while another may give smaller amounts to a number of teams. Teams with bad ideas may get nothing. The winning team will be the one that receives the highest amount of investments.