Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

"I Want to be a Chef" - Build A Business Plan

My 9 year old is determined to be a chef when he grows up. He has been interested in cooking since he was 2 and I perhaps fueled that energy by allowing him into the kitchen and ‘cook’ dishes with real pots and pans.

He feels that serving people food is the best way to make them happy. And he wants to ensure that he has good and tasty meals and more importantly is that everything served at his restaurant must not cost more than a dollar! He reasons that everyone must be able to afford and enjoy good food. He has got the name of the restaurant, which every now and then changes as his experiences change and develops. He had started with “The White Restaurant” and stuck to it for a few years, until recently, he wrote up his menu with name of restaurant changing to “The King’s Restaurant”. He says that anyone who eats at his restaurant is a king. (He did not mention about the queens though!)

I realized that perhaps I should document his thoughts down. I drew up a business plan for him and asked him to put his dreams, plans and action steps.

I thought to myself that he should be reminded of his young thoughts when he grows as well as for my husband and I to reminisce on our young son. It reminds me to say that the internet is a wonderful thing to allow us to pen and share this information with as many people as possible. And who knows, these ideas may just become real someday.

It is a simple plan, I asked him to complete a template with his ideas. It looks something like this. I have summarized it with the items that I asked him to think about. I helped him with it and it now runs to about 4 or 5 pages.

Name of Restaurant/Café
How will your menu look like
What is your theme
Building/corner shop/near a school/city?
What will you sell - Food and Beverages
Who will be your cook?
When do you want it open
What will you price your food and beverage?
Where will you open your restaurant
How many people will work for you
How much money will you need

Children can be taught from young the importance of planning and such and to articulate their dreams. These plans will change over time. But I realized an important aspect of this exercise – which is that getting him into the kitchen and cooking taught me to teach him other things, like thinking about his ambitions, penning them down, to be as specific and to have the entrepreneurial mind set.

I look forward to hearing your views and feedback. I am so quite happy to draw up a
business plan
for the mums out there – just drop me your email in the subscription button to the left.

Happy cooking and teaching your kids to have an ambition while cooking

Monday, January 11, 2010

Using the Internet to Teach Kids

I may be digressing a little from the subject of this blog.

But I wanted to share what I recently read in a magazine – it was a very interesting article on using the internet to teach kids. The article provided a list of free tools to help kids with writing, speaking, interacting and thinking.
I have not tried many of them. I very much would love to hear your views if these sites are useful to you and your kids.

These are some useful websites that I thought as parents we can choose to guide our kids but to use them responsibly.

GOOGLE DOCS
Docs.goole.com


Google Docs makes it easy to share and produce collaborative documents that could be used in almost any curriculum talk

Freemind
Freemind.sourceforge.net


This is one of the many free mind mapping applications available. Why not try a few and see one your kids prefer? I love this site the best because there is color and drawing involved.

EVERNOTE
www.evernote.com

This application enables you to capture, save and make a note about anything you or your children come across on the web

EMAIL
And of course your humble email from Google or Yahoo or MSN to connect people.

Personally, I am not a fan of Facebook because it lays too much of our private lives and it provides a very fast way of getting a lot of people on your network which may not be something I want for my kids immediately. I may change my mind in time!

As I am off topic, for those who are interested, please let me know your email address and I will send you the rest on the list.

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