An Alpaca Entrepreneur is Born

I love it when I can sneak a school lesson in without the kids really noticing.

Lizzie has been watching me all week, working my tail off to get product ready for an open house we are going to this weekend. I've been spinning, dyeing, washing, skirting....well, you get the picture.

Anyway, she's been watching all this and listening to us talk about selling these things and making money. Today she came to me and asked if she could make something out of alpaca and sell it to also make money (she's saving for an American Girl doll).

That little light bulb appeared over my head and I said sure, how much money do you want to make?

Her answer, of course, was $100 (the price of the doll).

This conversation went on for a bit as I asked what she was going to make, what she was going to sell it for, how much were supplies and how many would she have to sell to make her goal?

Now we have a sneaky math lesson. :o)

She decided on crocheting key chains out of alpaca yarn. I had her make a prototype and then take it apart to see how many yards were used in her project.

Then, after she knew how many yards were used, I had her do the math and see how many she could make out of a skein of yarn. Then divide to see how much each would cost to make based on the price of the skein.

I asked her how much she was going to sell each for now that she knew what they would cost to make. She quoted a price and then figured out her net profit based on the sales price.

The look on her face when she had figured out how many she would have to sell to get her 100 was priceless. She was dancing and screaming, I'd only have to sell 60!

Got to love her enthusiasm!

Now she's off getting started on her projects and I'm sitting here grinning at the math lesson I just gave her and there was no crying involved at all. :o)