The Young Entrepreneur
As homeschoolers, we can nurture our children's creativity and divergent thinking in the way that schools find often find difficult to do. Hold onto your seats because I'm about to tell you a story about how flies became the inspiration for my children's first business venture.
Today we're talking about young entrepreneurs! I'm Aubrey Hargis, Montessorian and mom of two. Those two children keep me constantly laughing and joyful. I love being attached to them in the beautiful and cosmic way that we will always be rooting for our children, and wanting to celebrate the weird, wild beings that they are...
because education is a journey we take with our children, and the opportunities for learning start over every day.
Hey Sweet Friend
I am here to tell you a story! It's a story of butterflies, and flies, and two boys who were destined to become brilliant, wildly successful entrepreneurs. I cannot wait to share this story with you. But first, if you’re new here, welcome! If you're interested in going deeper into some of what I do, I would recommend that you take a look at my FREE Homeschool Planner and Mini-course, where I talk all about how to plan your Montessori homeschool.
Meet Lizz
Each week, I like to feature someone who is a part of our Child of the Redwoods community! The participants in this community are such a huge part of what makes it special. This week, we’re sharing advice and inspiration from Homeschool of the Redwoods Alumna and Constellation member Lizz, Montessori mom of 3! You can read more about Lizz here.
How are Montessori and Entrepreneurism Connected?
As Montessorians, we want to raise children who are independent. As soon as we see our little Montessori babies and toddlers starting to crawl and toddle around and explore their world, we have this emphasis on helping them to grow up with independence with an independent spirit. And I personally believe that children go through and grow through a great deal of attachment first, in order to form a secure bond to feel safe. That early dependence and trust fosters the security for a child to be independent. Every child is on their own timeline of growing up and becoming independent. Since it is something that we value, we try to set up our environment and our interactions with our children, to help them unleash their independence when they are ready. As they get older and older, this independence manifests itself in new fun (and funny!) ways.
Montessori also heavily emphasizes creativity and divergent thinking from the masses. This is not something that is generally taught in mainstream schools, which hinge upon compliant children who have a lot of convergent thinking. Montessorians value the ability of children to find multiple different approaches to any given problem; to challenge themselves to prove themselves and others wrong. This willingness to nurture out-of-the-box thinking is part of the reason Montessori has gained traction as a system that supports children who are gifted, exceptional, or neurodivergent. Our main goal is not obedience; we are a child lead philosophy! So, we're going to follow them and see where they lead.
In Montessori, we also really value instilling confidence in the child. If we can foster an environment for our children that validates how unique and interesting and different they are, how capable they are of learning how to do something their own way, then we're going to end up with someone who makes a pretty good entrepreneur: someone who's creative, independent, has divergent thinking from the norm, and a whole lot of confidence.
My Own Young Entrepreneurs
My kids had wanted to be entrepreneurs for a long time! I think it probably came from Snoopy. They read a whole lot of Charles Schulz when they were little. In those Snoopy comics were SO many lemonade stands. So they desperately, desperately wanted a lemonade stand.
Unfortunately, our high traffic neighborhood with just a few kids and LOTS of cars was not a great place for a lemonade stand. So, they would host lemonade stands inside. We would come and we would pay the kids a quarter or whatever for a little cup of lemonade, and then walk away as though we were passersby. It was cute, and fun....and I think they were just bitten by the entrepreneur bug at this point.
Finding Their Own Business
I had bought them very cheap dollar store butterfly nets. I thought it would be fun: we could go out and capture the little white butterflies or other insects in the yard, examine them, and let them go!
Butterflies were not the only insects that our neighborhood had in droves. You see, our area has a composting program--so most homes have compost bins (which is so wonderful). Unfortunately, it also means that when it gets too warm, the compost bins draw flies...flies which fly RIGHT into the open windows of all the homes which, like ours, are not air conditioned!
SO: there are middling flies, right in the middle of the living room. They buzz and zip around, tussling with one another when they fly too close together. My kids find these flies so funny. They'll sit on the couch, and watch these flies and name them. I’ll be trying to read them a story and they’ll say “Mom, shhhhh--the flies are battling!” It’s gross...and funny. And ANNOYING!
When the flies come in, I am instantly ready to get rid of these flies. But you know, fly swatters don't work so well. The flies always seem to evade me. They're really fast little creatures! However, my kids figured out that if they use those butterfly nets, they could catch these little flies really pretty quickly. I was folding the laundry one day, and came upstairs, and they had nets full of flies they’d caught. They were so proud! And I said “This is amazing. You guys caught these flies, yay. Let's go release them outside!” And so we did. This went on for a couple of days: them capturing flies, much to their and my delight, and then releasing them back outside.
How Their Play Became a Business
On the third day, they got smart. They came up to me and they said:
“Hey, Mom, do you need any flies to be cut?”
And I said “I don't know. Are there a bunch of flies?”
They replied “Yeah. There are lots of flies in our living room, they are buzzing around, you're going to hate them. Come on, come upstairs and see them!”
And though I really didn’t want to see the flies, I went up with them. There they were, in the living room. My two little kids had these mischievous looks on their faces and they're nodding: “See these flies? Don’t you want to get rid of them?”
And I said “Yes!”
And they said: “It's gonna cost you…”
And I said “Why is it gonna cost me?”
And they replied “...because we're gonna charge you.”
So they devised a system, and we negotiated how much each fly was worth, according to their size. They got really excited, and I went down to the basement again. When I returned, they had created a whole sign that had the name of their flycatching business, whatever it was, and had the biggest smiles on their faces. They also had a tally: a list of how many flies they had caught, and how much money I owed them.
I thought that this was great! Here they were, creating a business of their own, as silly as it was of an idea. They were doing math, adding up all those figures, working with decimals, and just feeling all empowered! This fly business went on the entire fly season, and those kids must have caught at least 100 flies from our house. I am sure they were the same flies, buzzing back in and then being expelled because all our windows are open. But they sure ran a good fly business. Raised their rates, even, and negotiated new deals, returning in future seasons.
The Value of Entrepreneurship for Children
I truly believe that's how learning should be. Learning should not be a chore; learning should not be only just sit down and do these worksheets. Learning should not be from one time to another on the clock. Sometimes homeschooling is that way, especially if there's something that your child is not intrinsically motivated to do, and you know that they need to learn this particular skill. I've been there, I'm not judging you for it!
But in the ideal world, when we close our eyes and dream about what real school should look like, it's like this! Fun, motivating, creative, involving all of the subject areas in one...there's so much that they could be learning from an enterprise like the fly business.
I probably could have taken their business and made lessons out of it. I could have said, “Hey, great. Now we're going to study flies for science, write fly stories for language, and for math, I'm going to give you a bunch of problems about how much money you can make if you catch x number of flies…” but I didn’t. This is Montessori, and we want our children to take the lead. I can entice, and offer suggestions.
I could say, “Oh! I've been reading about the lifecycle of the fly. It's really interesting. Would you like to come learn?” or I might sit down at a table and draw the parts of the fly and say, “I can see the fly’s wings so well here! Do you want to see?” and they can choose to join, or decline. We must be careful though, because if we go too far with that, we aren't allowing ourselves to be a child-led environment anymore. We're taking control or micromanaging them. We want our children to take the lead and to flourish. We want them to feel that confidence that comes from doing something cool and new, and a little bit divergent.
Gratitude
I'm grateful for flies...for all those gross flies that came out of all the compost bins in my neighborhood, came into my house, and inspired my children to be creative little souls. It helped them come up with an entrepreneurial spirit that they had not really developed before, to take that lemonade stand dream and make it into a fly business. It is something that I will always hold near and dear in my heart, and that I'll always think of every time I'm grossed out by flies.
