The Marshall Early Education STEM Center partnered with the Lewis College of Business for a lemonade project, which is leading up to a lemonade stand set to debut Thursday.

Director of stakeholder engagement for the COB Glen Midkiff came to the Marshall EE STEM teachers with the project idea early February. COB students have been working closely with the 3, 4 and 5-year-olds at the Marshall EE STEM Center.

Lead studio educator for Marshall EE STEM Claire McCoy said she has been presenting the children with experiences based around lemonade day and other lemon experiences to get them ready for the actual event.

McCoy said the idea behind this is to provide an inside look into entrepreneurship.

The young children have been tasked with creating their own businesses in the form of a lemonade stand. “Part of the lemonade process is that they’ve created their own lemonade stand, priced their own product, they’ve advertised their product and we’ve had uniforms donated,” McCoy said. “So, all portions of a business have been taken into consideration with this lemonade day.”

COB students helped the children create advertisements, hang flyers around campus, create canvas-sized advertisements and construct the lemonade stand.

McCoy said explaining pricing to the children was an interesting experience as some of them thought they should charge $100 for the lemonade, but they finally settled on $1 a cup.  McCoy said the children’s goal is simply to raise money.

Proceeds will go back to the center to help provide for the children.

This is the first time the Marshall EE STEM program has celebrated lemonade day, but it has done other projects with the children. McCoy said she hopes to do something similar in future years.

Cheyenne DeBolt can be contacted at [email protected].