‘Lemon-Aide Stand’ Teaches Baldwin Second Graders Economics Lessons

BALDWIN, NY. — 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.

For Maldonado and Maywald, the economics lessons were already bearing fruit by the time the students stepped into the hallway. Complex concepts for second graders, like profit margin and operating costs, were rapidly becoming part of their lexicon.

“We had kindergartners come in this morning and draw pictures of lemons and lemonade stands,” Maldonado said. “They remember it, from year to year, too. We started it two years ago, when the fourth graders now were second graders, and they came in today and said, ‘I remember when we did a lemonade stand.’”

For administrators at Baldwin, the lemonade stand was a hands-on way to teach students some big ideas.

“This takes the economics lesson that’s in second grade and we added a lot of financial literacy to it,” Superintendent Anthony Mignella said. “We also believe in soft skills, like critical thinking, collaboration, communication. So when we design these units of study, we want to make sure those are embedded in them. And another piece is civic engagement.”

That civic engagement, the teachers behind the program said, was a part of the program that Baldwin students were able to grasp quickly. In this case, “civic engagement” meant giving other kids the same things that they get excited about: in-class materials, field trips and assemblies.

“The kids were inspired that materials would be purchased for the camp, the kids would be able to go on field trips, different activities and people that could come in to see them,” Maywald said.

“It’s just meaningful,” Maldonado said.

In conversation with Patch Friday, the teachers said they had already made as much money this year as they had in the two previous years of selling lemonade.