Description: Students understand what they have, what they could sell, and what it will cost.
Intention: Students learn how to turn available garden resources into a simple business idea while understanding basic costs, resource management and value creation.
This is the first Brick of a series of 3;
Part 1 – Plan the business
Part 2 – Price, market & prepare
Part 3 – Market, money & reflection
Before:
Before the lesson:
- Check which vegetables, herbs or other products are ready to harvest.
- Prepare a simple garden inventory sheet for students.
- Collect information about existing materials and ingredients available at school.
- Prepare a simple cost calculation sheet for each team.
1
Introduction
- Explain the challenge: “We are going to create a small regenerative school business.”
- Briefly introduce cost, revenue, profit, supply and demand.
2
Survey the garden
- Walk through the garden.
- List what is ready to harvest and estimate quantities.
- Discuss: What resources do we have? What can we realistically produce?
3
Decide what to sell
- Teams choose products.
- Decide whether to sell vegetables directly or make simple value-added products.
4
Calculate costs
- Seeds/materials
- Jars/bags/labels
- Extra ingredients
- Other production costs
Didactic tips
- Keep it concrete: Use real vegetables, materials and prices wherever possible.
- Let students make the decisions: Guide them with questions rather than choosing the products for them.
- Start simple: Encourage simple products that can realistically be produced with the available resources.
- Make costs visible: Let students physically identify what is needed to make each product and connect each item to a cost.
- Ask guiding questions: What do we have? What do we need? What could we make? What will it cost?
- Connect to the bigger picture: Highlight how using local resources and reinvesting profits can support the school garden and community.