Explore our enterprise teaching resources, for parents and teachers looking to take the role models, messages and inspiration within the Clever Tykes books and develop the skills and mindsets of their children or students. You’ll also find our top recommendations for enterprise teaching resources!
Join thousands of forward-thinking schools that are using the Clever Tykes stories and resources to pioneer primary enterprise education.
Buy all of these resources from Amazon now:
Four inspiring storybooks
A 100+ page guidebook
Hours of valuable activities
Self-learning and interactive options
New role models
Better problem-solving skills
Resourcefulness and resillience
Increased confidence
The Clever Tykes storybooks and accompanying teachers guide are suitable for guided reading, class reading and approximately four half-terms of PSHE or Health lessons. The resources are suitable for key stage 2 children (kids ages 7-10).
So what is Clever Tykes?
Clever Tykes is a series of fictional kids stories about role models with a passion for something that they turn into a mini venture. They’re entertaining stories but they also contain valuable messages, inspiring key characteristics in readers. We’ve also developed teaching resources to help get even more crucial life lessons and skills form the books.
The Clever Tykes books and teacher’s guide create a multifunctional teaching resource. The stories address many topics taught in a traditional citizenship or health curriculum such as healthy lifestyles, stranger and e-safety and equal opportunities. They also spark positive, creative and resourceful behaviour. This makes the Clever Tykes resources the perfect way to revamp your PSHE or health lessons, making them relevant to modern society and setting kids up well for the future.
The resources also provide the option of creating after school enterprise clubs, to add huge value to children outside classroom hours.
Perfect resources for:
See inside the 100-page story guidebook:
Proactive teachers are always on the hunt for the best resources to share with their pupils. With a lot of hype surrounding enterprise education but with few tried and tested resources available, it can be a difficult task to find the best. Naturally, we think Clever Tykes produces the best enterprise resources for primary schools! But what is it that makes them good? If you already have the Clever Tykes books and resources or if you’re looking for more ways of inspiring and empowering students, what should you be looking out for in other enterprise resources?
The best enterprise resources will have a number of important traits which help children understand what enterprise is and how it relates to both real life and other subjects in the primary curriculum. Not only that, the best resources will help you, the teacher, deliver enterprise effectively so we need to get this right! Here are the top four important traits:
1. Enterprise is built into the curriculum – not squished in on top of everything else
If you’re a teacher, you’ll be well aware of timetabling pressures. The school day is not getting any longer and more and more subjects are being crammed into it. If enterprise learning requires discreet lessons, your precious time on other key subjects is going to be strained so you might need to run an after school enterprise club instead. Whilst these clubs are a great way of delivering enterprise education, wouldn’t it be great to be able to smoothly integrate enterprise into the timetable?
This means that the best enterprise resources should clearly identify where they fit into the primary curriculum, whether this through PSHE/citizenship or through integration into parts of other lessons like maths (where kids can develop financial literacy), art & design (advertising/marketing) or English/creative writing (anything is possible!).
2. Enterprise should make teaching and learning easier!
Enterprise resources must be clear about what the learning outcomes of each session are and how they will be achieved. Whilst enterprise learning should not be overly prescriptive (see point 3), it must still conform to the processes of effective teaching and learning. As a teacher, having the tools to deliver effective lessons is far more important than the lessons’ content itself.
This means that the quality of resources must be high and there should be scope to improve existing subject delivery. Enterprise education has the power to bring maths lessons to life and provide real purpose to art & design as well as develop key life skills with the correct choice of exercises.
3. The best enterprise resources should encourage creativity and subjective thinking
‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ are words we should avoid using when it comes to enterprise education. Creativity and trying new things are the most important elements of enterprise and mistakes should be valued and learned from. Entrepreneurs have a certain mindset that helps them challenge what already exists and makes them want to change things. In order to make this change, a future state or situation must be imagined and this takes a huge amount of creativity followed by belief in your idea.
Whether these ideas are good or not is often entirely subjective and people have found success in the most unlikely of circumstances with weird and wonderful products or services. This is why as we deliver enterprise education, we can’t adhere too closely to “matter of fact” teaching resources but merely a framework with some clear directions. Even with subjective topics and discussion-based tasks, there can still be ways of assessing how advanced a child is at the subject as well as ways of developing and challenging them.
4. Consistency is the key
Interestingly, there are a number of enterprise education providers who deliver one-off sessions to primary schools in the form of an enterprise day. Children learn some great lessons from these days and being off timetable adds to the creative and positive environment required for entrepreneurship. However, in order to really promote a culture of enterprising thinking and behaviour, enterprise education must be integrated into schooling on a regular basis. This means that the best enterprise resources for primary schools will have a structure allowing teaching and learning of enterprise over a term or year and complement additional enterprise days.
So what does this all mean?
All of the points are interconnected. High-quality resources will make teaching easier and more effective, meaning you’ll want to integrate them into your daily schedule. The best resources will fit into the curriculum creating that much-needed consistency and bring creativity to a range of subjects without being something extra to teach!
There are many ways schools can introduce enterprise education to kids. Check out this article for inspiration and ideas about getting enterprise into schools.
Don’t delay making huge improvements to your enterprise teaching with Clever Tykes and give your students a brighter tomorrow.
Four inspiring storybooks
A 100+ page guidebook
Hours of valuable activities
Self-learning and interactive options
New role models
Better problem-solving skills
Resourcefulness and resillience
Increased confidence
I am a huge advocate of the entrepreneurial messages and characteristics that you are driving. I think it is a fantastic idea to instil the idea of entrepreneurship into children from a young age. This is a great way to open children up to the idea of not always following conventional paths and giving them the belief and confidence to pursue their own creative business ideas.
The Clever Tykes series are such a wonderful way to introduce ‘enterprise’ to children from a young age – I can’t recommend them highly enough, and strongly urge parents to read along with their child as there is no doubt the stories will stimulate lots of questions and interest!
I found Walk-it Willow easy to read and full of lovely messages that children can take from it. It touched on taking responsibility, problem solving, admitting mistakes and also the work it takes to run a small business. Willow is entertaining but very human. A lovely story.
