(Don’t miss Wednesday’s webinar at 2 pm CST by Michael Simmons, Co-Founder & CEO, Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour,  on Why Every Student Should Be an Entrepreneur! See details below or click here)

This week, February 20-27, the Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education is sponsoring the 4th annual National Entrepreneurship Week. In 2006 the US Congress established National Entrepreneurship Week as a celebration of American entrepreneurs and the lifelong learning educational opportunities that prepare the NEW business leaders of the future. Supporting the entrepreneurial culture is part of their emphasis, but advocating entrepreneurial education is their primary objective.

Who is the Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education?

“A national membership organization composed of 100+ agencies and institutions supporting entrepreneurship education as a lifelong learning process. Member organizations represent over 40,000 teachers that annually reach at least 2 million students nationwide. Our mission is to incorporate entrepreneurship education within all disciplines, to infuse students with the entrepreneurial mindset, and encourage our members to work together to create educational opportunities to meet the demands of a global economy. We believe that entrepreneurs are not “born”, but rather they “become” through the experiences of their lives.”  (taken from their website, Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education)

Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education and the information they offered was largely responsible for the inspiration behind Homeschool Entrepreneur. Their philosophy of exposing all students to the basics of entrepreneurship as an essential component to any education was a revelation to me. As a child, I grew up with the spirit of entrepreneurship, which progressed naturally to making it an integral part of our homeschool. It’s one of those moments you realize that something you’ve always taken for granted isn’t necessarily a part of everyone’s experience – yet see the intrinsic value of making it so. Hence, Homeschool-Entrepreneur was born – as a way to share simple ways to make entrepreneurial thinking a part of every family that catches the vision.

Check out their website, www.entre-ed.org,  for a wealth of information to satisfy your entrepreneurial cravings. If you know someone that is unemployed, send them to their new “One Stop Career Center” that is providing entrepreneurship education, training, and coaching to the unemployed as a viable alternative to the traditional job hunt. Individual entrepreneurs have been the fastest growing segment in the current recession.It simply works.

Find Activities In Your State

So, what exactly happens during National Entrepreneurship Week? Well, that depends on where you live. It varies dramatically, but a good place to start is the map at www.nationaleweek.org and click on your state. Many states (like Tennessee) don’t have anything at all, but there is something that I haven’t had a chance to catch yet that looks interesting that anyone reading this can access. The Small Business Administration is offering FREE Youthpreneur webinars at 10 am and 2 pm (CST) all week. I intend to catch Wednesday’s webinar by Michael Simmons, Co-Founder & CEO, Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour,  on Why Every Student Should Be an Entrepreneur. For more information and access codes to this week’s webinars (held at readytalk.com) go to www.nationaleweek.org/eweek_files/SBANationalEntrepreneurshipWeek.pdf

We’ll cover more of this week’s activities later this week. Don’t miss it!

I thought I’d share an interesting video I watched this morning about behavioral economics. Before you click onto another site, hear me out. This guy is funny, and illustrates how our mind often makes irrational decisions based on the choices offered. It’s less than 20 minutes and well worth the time. Who knows? It could save you an irrational decision! Of course, the intention is to help you market your business more …uh, irrationally?

A little background:

I found this video on a highly informative website, Mark Flavin’s Internet Marketing Blog. He offers a decent “best traffic tips” download free (for the price of your email address, of course) which is very worthwhile.

TED, in case you haven’t discovered this as a resource for your homeschool high school, is a library of the best speeches (majority under 30 minutes – which is well over the average American’s attention span!). You can do a search for the subject at hand, or use it to help with form, etc in your own “speech class”! Check out TED, “Ideas Worth Spreading”.

Caught playing games with his nieces!

I found this list of 14 games on Sparkplugging, a website that you’ll find more great information about starting a home business. Started by Wendy Piersall, it was originally a website just for moms starting a business, but when she realized that the bulk of her readers were men, she changed her look to accommodate everyone.

These 14 educational games are classics, and I’ve talked about several of them before. Since many of you are still looking for Christmas presents for your children that will last longer than a day, I thought you’d like a list to take to the store. I’m a big believer in incorporating educational games into the school routine, and games about business were always big at our house!

A heads up on the game, The Sims 2: Open For Business, it’s an expansion pack, with a “T” rating. When we bought this game we were really excited, yet learned to read the fine print BEFORE I leave the store from now on.  I was so glad when my game-savvy older son informed his not-so-game-savvy mom that you need the original Sims 2 game to play this particular “expansion pack” (I had no idea what that meant, but it wasn’t clear on the package to someone like me that you needed something else to make this game work!).

Thankfully, we had not opened the game yet and were able to return it. Maybe we’ll tackle the entire set next year . . . although I also noticed (again, after the fact) that there was a “T” rating, which included the warning of “Crude humor, sexual themes, violence” – so maybe NOT.

Many of the games referred to are available as a download, at a much more reasonable price than most of the board games this year. There are many business-type games you can try over at Gamehouse (one of the few game sites of this type that Cnet deems safe) and they can be purchased to keep for as little as $6.99.   Signing up for the free trial allows you to try any of their games for 60 minutes, and as a thank you for trying them out, they give you one full featured game to keep. Of course, they hope that you continue paying the monthly fee, and we did do that last year for a few months and came away with several games that my younger son still plays. Jane’s Hotel and Diner Dash are two of his favorites, but there are many more sophisticated business related games available there. Most of the “tycoon” games are available, and I really liked being able to try many of the games online without having to download them onto our computer first.

While you’re over at Sparkplugging, be sure to sign up for their  FREE 21-Page Internet Business Idea Guide. We plan on covering the ‘how-to’ of many of those ideas next year. Make 2010 your year to finally get that online business started!

Read all 14 games at http://www.sparkplugging.com/sparkplug-ceo/14-educational-games-to-teach-your-kids-about-business/

Answer 3 quick survey questions for Wendy and get her ” Top Ten Marketing Mistakes Made by Home Business Entrepreneurs!” That’s something we SHOULD cover next year! Can you tell I have big plans for next year?

Do any of you have a game you’ve found that has good “business educational” value? Would love to hear!

Investopedia is an outstanding website for your older teen if they are interested in anything to do with finance. Even if they’re NOT interested, starting them out with their own stock portfolio and $100,000 to play with might get them interested! Of course, if you don’t have $100,000 to let them play with, then maybe Investopedia’s Stock Simulator will have to do.

My middle son was not interested in anything except soccer during high school, especially not finance.  We were racking our brains to come up with anything he might want to do or have an aptitude in besides soccer. So, purely by chance as a school project, I required that he start a portfolio on Investopedia’s Stock Simulator.  The rest is history. With very little help from us, he found he had a real knack for making money, so much so he was invited to join one of the ‘elite’ groups in the simulator – and was hooked on finance. Six years later, he’s on track to graduate this Spring with a degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Finance. His plan is to enter grad school next fall-same subject. Who’d a thunk?

All that to recommend the source our title, 3 Money Lessons Your Kids Should Know. The quality of financial information on that site is some of the best found online. In this article, the 3 main points are refreshingly unique as opposed to the majority of diluted advice directed to parents for their kid’s money mentoring.

Taking into consideration that teaching guidance principles versus rules works much better and adapts well with the wide variety of circumstances in families.

Here are the three key concepts in a nutshell:

1. Think of money as stored work. Most kids have no concept of money and what it takes to get it. Put it in terms of labor, like, “Would you trade a weekend of work for that toy?”.
2. Money is time. Similar to the concept above, but instead of working with money that has already been earned, you are looking at money that could be earned – or not earned and the results.
3. Money has a life of it’s own. Explaining to your children what money does while it’s just ’sitting around’. Read the article.

If any of this has confused you, that’s good, only because I want you read the entire article and check out the website. I think you’ll be glad you did. Open an Investopedia stock account while you’re there – it’s a good time to start, since most stocks can only go up from here (in theory…). Keep in mind you will be asked to sign up for a myriad of items, none of which are necessary for using the simulator.

Other articles there that might interest you:

5 Money Skills To Teach Your Kids

Talking About Money When Times Are Tough

Help Your Kids Understand Money

9 Green Careers With High Pay

The Young Entrepreneur Foundation awards  scholarships every year to promising entrepreneurial high school seniors. As of midnight, 10-31-09, applications opened up for the 2010 awards.

NFIB Young Entrepreneur Awards are open to any graduating high school senior entering their freshman year in the Fall of 2010 at an accredited (not for profit) two- or four-year university, college or vocational/technical institute. You can apply online for a chance to win a scholarship valued from $1,000-$10,000. Hurry, deadline is Dec 31, 2009

Apply online at https://www.applyists.net/IntroPage.asp (click on ‘Apply or update a new application’)

Learn more about the Young Entrepreneur Foundation and the EIC (Entrepreneurs In the Classroom) Be sure to check out the free curriculum they offer -http://eitccurriculum.com/