Sponsors
Week 1
Team name: Sprinkle of joy
Tell us what you have been doing this week
This week we were excited to start and have had a really busy week, we've met Louise from Marsh Commercial (our partner business). Louise gave us lots of ideas and we thought our mission could be to bring joy to people who may need some. We split off into groups to brainstorm our ideas and came up with salt-dough and wool decorations, Santa stones, coffee morning and carol singing. We thought people could buy gifts and give them to people they wouldn't normally,who might be feeling sad or lonely to spread some joy and the coffee morning would be a get together for people who are feeling alone.
What did you learn this week?
Well we learnt that a social enterprise is a business that helps to protect the environment or help others, then we learnt (from Emma on zoom) how Rebuild sells unused materials and they also give to schools and business that need the materials. So we learnt how to be a profitable social enterprise.
What did you find difficult this week?
We struggled deciding on the name and logo because we had many ideas and it was hard to pick just one out of many great ones. We voted for the top four and asked Louise to choose. This is our new logo
Discussing our ideas with Louise
Our social enterprise logo!
Week 2 - half term
Week 3
Tell us what you have been doing this week
This week, we have sent letters to some local businesses to see if they could donate materials to us. We split up into five different groups for each idea we had. Each group shared their plans. As a class we voted for the dates for our coffee morning and carol singing and asked Mrs Shaw to add them to the school calendar. We started on the wool decoration templates and our production team tested different paints to see which would be best - they decided to go with acrylic. Each group ordered the materials they need. We also chose Watchtree as our charity to split any profit we make with.
What did you learn this week?
We learned what a mission statement is and why it's important. Our mission statement is 'to spread joy to people in our local area this Christmas.' And we learned what expenditure and income was when we looked at the Money Management Template and why this is important in business.
What did you find difficult this week?
Making a decision on which charity we will donate to. The production team also found it hard to find a way to hang the wool decorations up but after a few goes they worked out the best way to do it.
Making the templates for our wool decorations.
The letter we wrote to send to local businesses.
Our resilience paid off!
Making our salt dough decorations.
Week 4
Tell us what you have been doing this week
We started the production of our decorations. From the letters we wrote last week we got a donation from Carrs flour and got 10 bags of flour also acrylic paint was donated from another business. We worked as a team to make each product and had lots of fun cutting out the salt dough decorations. We looked at our expenditure and how many decorations we had made to decide on a price for each decoration. Also our marketing group planned a presentation to give to the rest of the school in assembly on Monday to launch our products and explain our mission!
What did you learn this week?
We learnt to be resilient when making the wool decorations as it was hard to wrap around the corners. We didn't give up and by helping each other we managed to complete lots of decorations.
We also learnt that acrylic paint doesn't come out of clothes!
What did you find difficult this week?
We found making the decorations difficult as it was a new skill to learn and quite fiddly.
Also we found it hard to decide on our decoration's price because we didn't want to make them too expensive.
Week 5
Tell us what you have been doing this week
On Monday, we led an assembly to tell the whole school about our enterprise. We explained about our mission of spreading joy in the community and how they can help by giving someone our Christmas decoration. On Wednesday, we held a sale in the school hall of our Christmas decorations and made £131.30! Our marketing team have been creating posters for our coffee morning and we received some more donations for this. Also, we met Leanne from Watchtree, which is our chosen charity, she explained how our donation would help. Finally we zoomed Louise from Marsh to update her. We had a great week!
What did you learn this week?
We learnt that each of us has a different skill we are good at and we needed everyone's skills this week! Some people are good at speaking in front of people, creativity when making the decorations, communicating/persuading people to buy and maths skills when counting the money!
What did you find difficult this week?
We found counting money difficult because we kept losing count.
Also our production team have found it hard to keep up with the sales.
Our assembly launching our enterprise!
We were so excited for our first sale!
Our marketing team advertising our coffee morning
Some of our decorations on sale at Watchtree Nature Reserve
Week 6
Tell us what you have been doing this week
This week we have been to London on residential so haven't had much time for Bright Stars but we met Mark Jenkinson the MP in the Houses of Parliament and told him about our enterprise .
We chose our Christmas carols for our carol singing for people around the Village and we practised singing the carols on the bus.
On Friday, we stuck posters up in the local area and around the school to advertise our coffee morning which is happening next week. We have also spread the word using our school's facebook page.
Our decorations have gone on sale at Watchtree and are selling well.
What did you learn this week?
We learnt some sales tactics from when we went shopping in Leicester square. Some shops had special offers if you bought more than one item so we thought we could do this too at our next sale. Our sales team are going to work out an offer for the salt dough decorations next week.
What did you find difficult this week?
Finding time to do things because we have been very busy on our residential this week!
Week 7
Tell us what you have been doing this week
This week we held our coffee morning. From the letters we wrote, we received donations of tea, coffee, juice, milk, biscuits and cakes. We also made some extra cakes so that we had enough. We all had different jobs, some people were serving cakes and drinks, taking money and giving change, selling decorations, greeting people and talking on the stage about our mission. We also sang carols altogether.
Lots of people came and we made £211.40. Because we had some cakes left over and we didn't want to waste them we had an extra sale after school of leftover cake and made another £46.40.
What did you learn this week?
We learnt to be resilient as we were disappointed that we didn’t sell all our cakes, but turned this into a positive by having an extra sale. We learnt how important working as a team is when organising and running an event because there is so much to do. Also singing is a good way of spreading joy!
What did you find difficult this week?
We found it difficult to know how many people would come to our event because we advertised it in different places. We weren’t sure how much we would need so we made extra to make sure we had enough.
There was a great turnout at our coffee morning.
Ready to test our selling skills!
Spreading joy by carol singing
Working at the fayre
Week 8
Tell us what you have been doing this week
This week we went carol singing to spread some joy around Thursby. We all wore santa hats while we walked around the village singing and we carried a bucket with us for anyone who wanted to make a donation. We planned our route to try and cover as much of the village as possible and we posted on the local village Facebook group so people would know. It was lots of fun and we felt very Christmassy! On Thursday we had a stall at the local Christmas fayre. Because it wasn't in school time, we set up a rota of who was working at different times so the stall always had someone working on it.
What did you learn this week?
For the Christmas fayre it was outside of school time so we learnt that to make an enterprise successful you have to give up some of your own time to help. We worked as a team and communicated with each other so everyone knew when they had to work on the stall and it made it fair for everyone.
What did you find difficult this week?
Singing and walking at the same time! It was a frosty morning when we went carol singing so it was quite hard to get people out of their houses so we had to sing even louder so they could hear us!
Week 9
Tell us what you have been doing this week
We wrote some Christmas poems to give to two local care homes. We also decided to donate the leftover decorations to the care homes. They were extremely grateful and said they will use the decorations for years to come. Some of the residents hung them on the tree with us. We contacted Watchtree who told us our decorations had made £22 there. We organised Leanne to visit school next week so we could present her with half of our profit and she offered us a tour around Watchtree for our hard work so we are going to go after Christmas! We also wrote scripts about what we have done for our video.
What did you learn this week?
We have learnt how to speak clearly in the bright stars video. We also learnt that people are often extremely grateful for good deeds and it is a really nice feeling!
What did you find difficult this week?
We found it difficult to remember our scripts for the video so had to keep looking at our scripts to remind ourselves.
For pupils to answer:
In one sentence please tell us what bright stars has meant to you?
It has meant a lot because we've made our community happier and more joyful and because lots of us don't like public speaking but we did it.It was a fun experience because we learnt different skills!
For teachers to answer:
Can you tell us the impact this programme has had on your school?
This project has brought the class a lot closer together as they have had to collaborate probably more than they have ever had to before and being reliant on each other has built a lot of trust.
Seeing children who find academic work tricky, really throw themselves into the project has been an extremely rewarding experience for all involved.
It has given the children a unique opportunity of bringing their ideas to life and testing them in the real world, which they have thoroughly enjoyed!
As well as all of this, it has brought the community and school closer together. We have had some lovely comments throughout:
"If you ever do anything like this again please let me know and I would love to help because I really enjoyed being part of it." - someone who donated cakes for the coffee morning.
"It was lovely to all come together and sing some songs and spread festive cheer." - someone who attended the coffee morning.
"Thank you so much, we will use the decorations for years to come." Inglewood care home.
Please provide your business plan.
Please provide your marketing plan.
Please provide your finance report/template.
Charity name/money donated to.
Watchtree Nature Reserve
Final profit (minus the £50 seed funding).
£493.94
Hanging up our decorations with the residents.
The poems we wrote for the care home residents
Our Bright Stars video!
