Teach a child how money works by letting them run a tiny business
Six printable lessons that take a child from "what even is a business" to working
out whether their weekend actually made money. FREE to download, FREE to photocopy, no email required.
Built for a parent at the kitchen table and for a teacher with thirty kids and forty minutes.
Most money lessons for children teach saving. Mini CEOs teaches earning, pricing and profit, because
a child who has never made money has nothing to save.
Each lesson is one printed page with room to write. Nothing happens on a screen.
You do not need a business background to run these. Every sheet tells you what to say.
All six are FREE, and you may copy them for a whole class without asking us.
Why Mini CEOs
Why we made this, and what it costs you
Free for every family and classroom
Print it, copy it and share it with other teachers. No email and no sign-up.
Part of One80 Academy
Mini CEOs sits inside One80 Academy, our learning division, as a free guide for teachers and parents.
A free website for a real kid business
If a child starts a real business, One80 Consultation will build their website free of charge.
Earning first, then saving
Children learn price, cost and profit by running a tiny business, so they understand where money comes from.
Money
How money works, in four pictures
Read this with your child, or let them read it on their own. Each
one has a grown-up explanation and a line underneath that a seven year old can repeat back to you.
1
Money is a swap, not a prize
Money does not arrive because you worked hard or because you deserve it. It arrives when you hand
somebody something they wanted more than they wanted their money.
For kids: You give them a thing. They give you money. You both go home happy.
Youmade the lemonade
1 lemonade
75¢
Your customerwas thirsty
You wanted the money more. They wanted the drink more. That is why the swap happens.
2
Three numbers, and only one is yours
Cost is what you spent to make one. Price is what somebody pays. Profit is the
gap between them, and the gap is the only part you keep.
For kids: Take away what it cost you from what they paid you. Whatever is
left is yours.
You charge 75¢good
cost 40¢
you keep 35¢
Sell 29 to make $10
You charge 50¢careful
cost 40¢
10¢
Sell 100 to make $10
The price dropped by a third. What you keep dropped by more than two thirds, because the
cost did not move. This is the most useful idea on the page.
3
Some money has to go back in
The money that comes in is not all spendable. Part of it buys the next batch of lemons, or there is
no next batch. This is the difference between a business and a one-off afternoon.
For kids: Keep enough to buy more lemons, or tomorrow you have nothing to sell.
1Buy supplies
2Make it
3Sell it
4Money comes in
5Split it
and some of it goes straight back to step 1
Break the loop anywhere and the business stops. Lesson 4 is where a child decides how much
goes back in.
4
Split it before you spend it
When money arrives it all feels like yours. The habit worth building is splitting it the moment it
lands. The percentages are the child's to choose. Arguing about them is the lesson.
For kids: Before you spend a penny, put some in each jar. Every single time.
GROWmore lemons
SAVEdo not touch
GIVEsomeone else
SPENDyours
One possible split. Your child picks the numbers, then tests them against a real twenty
dollars in lesson 4, or in the envelope tool below.
That is the theory. The lessons are where a child does it.
Six printed pages, one idea each, with room to write. FREE, no sign-up, copy them for a whole class.
Making something real is where every business starts.
Start here
Pick your route through
Parents
Start with lesson 1 on a Saturday morning. Do one a week. By lesson 6 your child will have run
something real and counted what came back, which is the part that sticks.
Teachers
Each sheet fits a single period. Lessons 1, 2 and 4 work as standalone cover lessons. Lessons 5 and 6
need the class to have actually sold something first, even if it is only at break.
Homeschool and clubs
Run all six over a half term and finish with a real stall. Scout groups, libraries and after-school
clubs are welcome to use these the same way.
The six lessons
Download them one at a time or print the lot.
They work in order, because each one needs a number from the one before it.
Teachers: take all six in one file
Six pages, print ready, in lesson order. One download instead of six.
Somebody has a problem, you fix it, they pay you. The child finds three businesses they already
know and works out the problem each one solves, then finds one of their own.
The three numbers every business runs on. Worked through with a lemonade stand until the child can
say what one cup costs them and what is left after someone buys it.
Children almost always pick the lowest price because it feels fair. This one shows what happens to a
business that charges too little, and asks what you give people that the cheap seller does not.
Four jars: grow, save, give, spend. The child decides the splits before any money arrives, then
tests them against a real twenty dollars. This is the habit that outlasts the lemonade.
Five questions, five real people, answers written down exactly as given. The fastest way to waste a
weekend is to build something nobody asked for, and this is how grown-ups avoid it too.
Money in, money out, hours spent, earned per hour. Then one honest page on what went wrong and the
single thing to change next time. Most people skip this lesson. It is the one that compounds.
Nothing to sign up for and nothing is saved.
Type a number, see what happens. Grown-ups, these are meant to sit next to the printed sheet, not
replace it.
Tool 1
The three envelopes
Money came in. Split it before you spend any of it.
$
Whatever is left over is yours to spend.
SAVE$6.80do not touch it
GIVE$6.60someone who needs it
GROW$0.00buy the next batch
SPEND$6.60actually yours
Do this the same way every single time money arrives. The habit is the point, not
the percentages.
Tool 2
What should I charge?
Work out what one costs you first. Then pick your price.
$
One costs you40¢
Slide it and watch what happens to the money you keep.
cost
you keep
35¢you keep, each one
29to sell to make $10
That works. You keep nearly half of every sale.
If the red bar is bigger than the green one, you are paying people to take your
lemonade. That is lesson 3.
Start a real business and we build the website for FREE.
Mini CEO story
A lemonade stand that bought a 3D printer
One young maker, one idea and a real website. A family project we are happy to show as an example.
H100
H100 Lab
A young maker's 3D printing shop
1
The lemonade standHe sold lemonade to raise the money for his first 3D printers.
2
Toys you can no longer buyHe used the printers to make building-brick style toys that are not sold anymore.
3
From toys to useful gadgetsH100 Lab now sells useful little gadgets that bring some joy to other people.
4
The planHe wants to grow up to be an engineer, and every sale gets him closer.
Where it lines up with the lessons
Lesson 1. He found a problem: toys he wanted were no longer sold.
Lesson 4. Money came in from lemonade and went straight back into the printers.
Lesson 5. The gadgets are made for people who actually want them.
See the shop
The website is live. A child with a real business is exactly who the FREE build is for.
Full disclosure. H100 Lab is a family project connected to One80, so we show it as an example and not as a paying client. We keep the child's name, age, school and photo off this page on purpose.
Why business and not just saving
Most FREE money material for children teaches
saving, budgeting and spending carefully. That material is good and there is a lot of it. The gap is
earlier: a child who has never earned anything has nothing to budget, and the word "profit" stays
abstract until they have held the difference between what something cost them and what somebody paid.
So Mini CEOs starts at the other end. The child
makes something, prices it, sells it to a real person, and counts what came back. Saving arrives in
lesson 4, once there is something to save. Everything we teach adults who run businesses is in here, just
shrunk down to one page and a cup of lemonade.
How to run it
Print lessons 1 and 2 only. Do not hand over all six at once. The child decides what they are
selling before they see any of the money pages.
Let the idea be small and boring. Washing cars, dog biscuits, friendship bracelets, a lemonade
stand. A small idea they can finish beats a big one they abandon.
Make them spend real money on supplies. Front it if you have to, but it has to be paid back out
of what they earn. The loan is the lesson.
Do not rescue the price. If they price it too low, let them. Lesson 3 lands properly only after
they have worked a whole afternoon for ninety cents.
Finish with lesson 6 the same day. While they still remember what annoyed them. Memory fades
fast and so does the honesty.
If a child actually starts something, we will build them a website for FREE
Not a template and not a trial. A real one page site with their own name on it, built by us, hosted
for a year, no cost and nothing to cancel. We do this because a child who sees their own business on
the internet starts taking it seriously, and because we would rather be useful than advertise.
✓The child has already built or made the thing. Not an
idea, not a plan. Something that exists.
✓They have sold it to at least five real customers who
are not family. Lesson 6, filled in by hand, is how you show us.
✓They have kept going for at least a month. One good
Saturday is a great Saturday, but it is not a business yet.
✓A parent or guardian applies and stays the legal owner
of the site and the domain.
×We publish the business, never the child. No surname,
no school, no address, no photographs of them.
Most applications will be turned down, and we would rather say that here than in an email.
We take a handful each quarter because each one is built properly by a person, not generated. If your
child is not ready yet, that is not a no forever. Keep selling, fill in lesson 6 again in a few months,
and apply with better numbers.
Seven to twelve. Lessons 1 and 4 work from about seven. Lessons 3, 5 and 6 need a child who can
handle multiplication and a bit of disappointment, so around nine and up. Each sheet prints its own
age range in the corner.
Do I need to know anything about business to teach this?
No. Every sheet is written so you can read it cold and run it. The questions are already written out,
including the ones to ask when a child gets stuck. If you can run a board game you can run these.
Can I print these for my whole class?
Yes. Print as many as you want, for a class, a club, a library or a whole school. You do not need to
ask us and you do not need to credit us, though we are glad when people do. Please do not sell them.
Do I have to give you an email address?
No. The files download straight away with nothing to fill in. There is no list and no follow-up
sequence. If something here is useful, that is the whole transaction.
How is this different from the money lessons my school already uses?
Most school material covers saving, budgeting and banking. This covers the part before that: finding
something people will pay for, pricing it so it is worth doing, and checking afterwards whether it
worked. The two fit together rather than competing.
Does my child need to actually sell something?
For lessons 1 to 4, no. For 5 and 6, yes, and it matters. Selling one thing to one real person who
is not a relative teaches more than finishing all six worksheets perfectly.
Who made these?
One80 Consultation, a business consultation and marketing firm in Ohio. We spend our working days
helping owners with pricing, costs and whether the month actually made money. These are the same
questions, written for a nine year old.
Closed for the night, or busy on a job? Your customer is about to call someone else. Make it you.
Call (330) 406-3938 any hour. This is the same AI call center we build for clients, and we run our own phones on it. It answers every call, takes your details, and a real person follows up on the next business day. Call it now to hear what your customers would hear.
