Kids love biscuits and this turned out to be a great topic as it ended up as a mini project involving heaps of business skills.
Biscuit Project
The kids were pretty curious when we were shopping as to why the biscuits had so many different prices. We bought some different packets to explore the ingredients and decided to do a taste survey and that is when the project unfolded. I have included my planning below for you to dip in to if it might be something your children enjoy. This is the order we did it in but you can do it in any order. And you can expand on areas, add or omit depending on your child’s interest and ability.
What we did |
Why |
Curriculum covered |
Buy a few packs of different biscuits |
To explore the ingredients |
Writing ingredients in a list, using commas to separate them |
Biscuit analysis (product research) |
To see how each biscuit compared against our criteria, taste, crunch, value for money, looks |
Creating tables and maths addition through scoring (you can make the scoring out of 5, 10 or 100) |
Brainstormed what we would need to do in order to set up our own biscuits business |
To understand how to set up a business to sell a product |
List things and then order them as to which would come first |
A Facebook poll to see which biscuit people preferred (customer research) |
To see what customers want |
Computing setting up the poll and writing adding words, maths statistics, use information to create graphs |
Tasted some different fillings |
To be able to know what fillings taste like and be able to design our own |
Design and Technology evaluate and cooking, maths measure Researched biscuit manufacturing on YouTube how it is made |
Designed our own biscuits, we did two versions (product design) |
To be able to plan making our biscuits |
Design and Technology, design and writing/diagram and labelling |
Made our test batch of each biscuit |
To check whether the design and taste works |
Design and Technology cooking and evaluating, maths measure |
Tested our two biscuit designs with other people (customer research) using the same scoring chart as we used for our biscuit analysis |
To gather more customer feedback before making a final decision |
Speaking and listening, communicating, creating tables and maths addition through scoring (you can make the scoring out of 5, 10 or 100) |
Fine tuned our designs |
To plan to make our final version |
Design and Technology evaluate |
Looked at biscuit packaging in relation to what it is made from |
To consider whether recycled packaging is possible or helpful |
Design and Technology research, speaking and listening |
Looked at biscuit packaging and created a list of what we need on it |
To have all relevant information on our biscuits |
Writing lists or bullet points, dictionary work looking up what words mean |
Look at the shape of packaging |
To work out what net shape will work best |
Maths geometry, 3D shapes, measurements, nets |
Designed our packaging |
Using all information gathered to create exciting, eye catching packaging |
Could be done free hand (writing) or on computer (computer skills, font size, text, colour) |
Research other product names and straplines |
To spark ideas for our own name for our biscuits |
Used google adverts of biscuits to get some ideas, computer skills |
Created a name and strapline |
To create a catchy name that will help people remember your product and buy it again |
Writing skills, alliteration, rhyming words, speaking and listening to each others ideas |
Created a bar code |
To show how everything is electronically tagged and how this can help trace food according to its batch and show you what is in the product via what the numbers mean |
Researched on google and copied and pasted a bar code image, could also be made on a computer or make one freehand in maths focusing on accurate measure and/or line thickness |
Created customer service information |
To help children understand that if you make and sell something you are responsible for the product being what it says it is |
Writing our address or making up an address, upper and lower case letters |
Created an ingredient list in order of most ingredient first |
To help children understand how to read ingredients on packets |
Writing ingredients in a list using a comma |
Created nutritional information |
To show customers how much of each food group there is |
Computer writing, we googled and used a recipe converter, we then copied and pasted the results, maths measure and conversions of measure |
Looked at what each food group represents |
To help children understand the importance of a balanced diet |
Computer skills googled what each food group or book research |
Research and list what is needed in a biscuit advert |
To understand what is needed in a short video to be able to sell a product |
Write bullet points, brainstorm, speaking and listening |
Plan and create your own advert in 30 seconds |
Be able to sell your product in 30 seconds |
Computer skills using video record, if editing and taking it further using software like iMovie to edit and even create your own YouTube channel if age appropriate |
Research methods of selling the biscuits, from at the local food market to in the shops |
To understand how companies sell things |
Write lists of ways people sell, computer skills instagram, Facebook, YouTube, maths cost of advertising, fliers |
Worked out the price of our biscuits based on the ingredients used and the time it took them and advertising |
To help children appreciate that better ingredients will cost more and to plan in cost for their time |
Maths measurement converting, multiple, divide, addition and subtraction |