School Days: When Life Gives You Lemons

When life gives you lemons...

Water down the juice and sell your sour pucker cups to elementary school parents under the ruse of 'donating the money to charity.'

Wait.  That's a college lesson. The third graders at my favorite elementary school actually followed through with the donation.

The fundraiser was started by last year's batch of budding nine-year-olds.  Spring for them meant learning about business.  Business costs, supply and demand, advertising, sales pitches.  All the fundamentals paralleled with reading the action packed novela The Lemonade Wars.  It was all just another random lesson until the day before spring break 2011. That day one of their sixth grade friends died in the hallway from an ongoing heart condition. During their sadness and hurt, and with the help of their teachers, they decided to start their own businesses for an upcoming school event to raise money for the Phoenix Children's Hospital.  A place routinely frequented by their sixth grade buddy.

Each third grade class picked a business.

Lemonade Stand
Manicure Station
Candygrams
Tattoos

Sort of a One-Stop-Salon-Shop if you will.

The business hours were set for 'Celebrate Learning Night' when every grade level would be lovingly leading/dragging their parents through the hallways.

Jen asked last year's kids to come up with as many advertising ideas as they could.

Sign spinning. Great.
Commercials for the school news. Let's do it.
Ask Ms. Heidi to sew us a lemon costume like that pizza guy that stands on the corner by Slices. Um, I'll ask.

Of course she knew I would say 'yes.'  She was just being polite.

Just like I said yes when this year's class needed lemontastic T-shirt iron-ons with their snappy slogan.

The four classes together raised $740 last Thursday night.

And I delightedly watched 22 mini entrepreneurs work a lemon costume with more ferocity than the Suns Gorilla on crack.  If I was a fightin' girl I would have driven the lemon above down to the corner by Slices and had her tell the Pizza costume, "You better call Pizza Hut, because you just got pizowned!"

Let's be real.  The only thing that stopped me from making that drive was the fear of kidnapping charges.

Some of the success of the night could be credited to Isaac's belly advertising too.  I hope that he has as much heart and generosity as those third graders.  And I hope he likes costumes because it is out of his hands until he can utter the words, "Please Ms. Heidi, I don't want to wear the Mr. T headpiece anymore."