The Patch Highlights Brookside Elementary School

Excerpt from article:

For most, the combination of lemon juice, water, ice and enough sugar to make it taste sweet is an easy recipe for lemonade. For Baldwin second graders who followed the recipe Friday, it was a lesson in elementary economics.

The lemonade stand — dubbed a “lemon aide” stand by school officials — was the product of second graders in Lauren Maywald and Kristin Maldonado’s second grade classes, which gave students a chance to raise money for charity while learning a bit about economics. After being exposed to business concepts like profits, supply and demand and costs, the students went out into the main hallway at Brookside Elementary School to start making deals.

The goal was to raise over $1,000 for Camp Anchor, a Town of Hempstead initiative that provides programming for children and adults with special needs. While the students were out in the hallway from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m., a timespan that covered three different lunch periods at Brookside, the lemonade stand had already generated over $1,200 by 11:20.

During the lemonade stand, multiple students told Patch they had learned about things like advertising and budgeting, partnering with the PTA to put together a commercial for the stand and putting together a budget to make sure the stand was able to run at a profit. Despite all the work that went into the initiative, the students who made it happen were able to keep the mission in focus.

“We’re selling lemonade for a camp for kids with special needs,” a second grade student named Nova said.

Read the full story online in the Patch>>