Entrepreneurship CTE Activities
Business Simulations to Develop Career Readiness Skills
At Active Learning Labs, our program equips students with the practical knowledge and skills needed to excel as entrepreneurs, managers, and future leaders.
Through real‑world business and economic simulations, students gain hands‑on experience applying key concepts learned in the classroom. These interactive simulations provide an engaging and realistic way to explore business and economics, fostering critical thinking, decision‑making, and problem‑solving skills in a supportive, dynamic environment. Prepare your students for success with our interactive approach.
Pop-Up Retail Challenge
In this interactive simulation, students take on the role of a fruit stand manager at a bustling market. They’ll calculate sales, build pricing formulas, test pricing strategies through trial and error, and run a full 6-hour business simulation — all to maximize profit. A perfect blend of math, business decision-making, and entrepreneurial thinking!
Virtual School Store Challenge
Run a virtual school store in this team-based simulation! Students select products, analyze data, price, promote, purchase, and track sales—competing for profit. A real-world business challenge covering key concepts in marketing, finance, and teamwork.
Snack Stand Challenge
Run as a classroom competition, the Snack Stand Lab lets students manage a snack stand for a 2-hour school event. They learn demand, pricing, revenue, and profit by creating demand curves, adjusting prices based on weather, and analyzing sales to hit a $150 profit goal.
4P's of Marketing
This lab teaches students the 4 Ps of Marketing through interactive tasks. Acting as marketing managers, students analyze customer needs, set prices, allocate sales channels, and distribute a promotion budget. They review results and compete on a leaderboard based on profit.
The Right Price Challenge
Students will understand and use the relationship between price and demand to set the price of Brownies in a store and make the store profitable.
Farm To Table : Agri-Business Simulation
Students will manage a virtual 48-acre farm, making strategic decisions on crop selection, resource allocation, and pricing to maximize profit. Students will gain hands-on experience in demand curve analysis, pricing, financial management, sustainability, and logistics while learning essential business principles.
Financing Your Business
Students will explore the concept of financing a business through loans, the benefits of compound growth, and how the initial investment amount and growth rate can affect their profits. By the end of this activity, students will have a better understanding of how to finance a business and the factors to consider when taking out a loan.
Cookies Inc. : Recipe Ratios & Business Math
In this interactive lab, students launch a cookie cart business, using ratio concepts to scale recipes, convert kitchen measurements to standard units, and calculate costs. Over three months, they price cookies, track profits, and aim to earn $3,000 to open a store in the mall. Engaging, hands-on learning in business math!
Black Friday - Discount Pricing Challenge
The Black Friday Retail Challenge lab immerses students in a real-world simulation where they act as department store owners. They analyze demand, revenue, and profit curves to set optimal Black Friday prices for six flagship products, with a target of $2,500 extra profit.
St Patrick's Day Fruit Stand
In this business themed simulation, students run a fruit stand, calculating customer bills, automating totals with formulas, and optimizing prices through trial and error. They analyze sales trends, adjust pricing, and compete to maximize profit, gaining real-world business skills!
Christmas Closeout Sale: Festive Pricing Challenge
Students will delve into the fundamental concepts of pricing and the pivotal role demand curves play in shaping effective pricing strategies. The task for students is to adjust the price of six products for the Christmas closeout sale.
Food Truck Scramble
In this interactive simulation, students manage a fleet of food trucks across a virtual city. They’ll make real-world business decisions on location, pricing, staffing, and purchasing while competing against automated rivals. Over three months of gameplay, students learn how strategy, competition, and risk impact profits.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Students will work individually to categorize different needs into the appropriate levels of Maslow's Hierarchy. They will understand how different factors, such as money, and time can impact the needs.
Santa's Workshop: Mastering Spreadsheets
Students will calculate the material required for providing gifts for 25 children, and then learn and use spreadsheet functions to calculate for 1000 children.
Restaurant Rescue
Students will make investment decisions to rescue a restaurant that is running in losses. They will decide the amount to spend on new hires, worker training, and advertisement.
Foundations of the Modern World - Interest Rates, Unemployment, and Inflation
Students will be introduced to concepts showing how Interest Rates affect Unemployment and Inflation Rates. these concepts are introduced in the context of the Bronze Age city-state of ancient Sumer.
Cookies Inc. : Recipe Ratios - Paired Learning
Students will use Grandma's cookie recipe to start a new business. Use the concept of ratios, fractions & percentages to run the business for 3 months
Snack Stand - Paired Learning
The Snack Stand – Paired Learning Lab is a team-based simulation where students run a virtual snack stand for a three-hour school event. Using demand, revenue, and profit curves, they set prices, manage inventory, and adapt to changing weather. Leaderboards and collaboration scores drive engagement, while the platform auto-grades and tracks team progress.
Culinary Business Simulation
Culinary Business Simulation is an interactive bundle where students explore nutrition, budgeting, and food business management. From planning balanced meals to running a snack stand and rescuing a struggling restaurant, students apply real-world math, decision-making, and problem-solving in a fun, hands-on way!
This is a bundle of lessons
Entrepreneurship Bundle
The Entrepreneurship Bundle offers engaging, self-paced activities where students explore real-world business challenges. From pricing strategies and marketing analysis to financing and business planning, learners apply critical thinking to build, manage, and grow a virtual business while making data-driven decisions.
This is a bundle of lessons
Santa’s Journey: Route Optimization Quest
A fun, interactive lab where students help Santa plan his global gift delivery. They’ll explore time zones, calculate travel distances, and optimize routes to ensure Santa visits 25 cities within strict delivery windows while conserving reindeer food. Students learn geography, math, and logistics through real-world problem-solving in a festive context!
Using Spreadsheets for Marketing
In this short lab, students analyze sales data for 30 products and 4 customer personas using spreadsheet formulas like IF and VLOOKUP. They create a dynamic, month-filtered summary table with heat map formatting to identify the top products and target personas for maximum profit.