CORE students host holiday pop-up shop

Three students in the CORE program at South Side Middle School hosted a holiday pop-up shop with the goal of developing functional life skills, not turning a profit.

The project was created to help students develop skills in researching, marketing, design and finance. Students started out by doing research on Pinterest to come up with ideas for different products and explore different options for fonts, colors and shapes. They also applied these research skills towards ordering supplies and comparing prices with similar products listed on Etsy.

Using the Cricut Design Machine and other tools from the Middle School tech workshop, they designed festive aprons, dishtowels, wooden signs and candles with a festive flare. This required a lot of time measuring, cutting and shaping as well.

To promote the holiday pop-up shop, the students relied on their own set of marketing skills, creating flyers and sending out emails to notify others about the sale.

It also served as a way for the students to learn financial skills. The students created inventory sheets, collected and organized receipts for the different items ordered and created packaging to deliver the merchandise. It also taught students about collecting money, making change and filling out deposit slips.