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Not many people know how much flour, eggs and butter are needed to make 2,800 cookies. Not many people can say they were able to turn their cookie-baking skills into a small business, either.

That is exactly what fifth graders at Taylors Falls Elementary were able to accomplish with their annual Val-gram cookie sale project earlier this month.

The sale of heart-shaped cookies to students, staff and parents not only raised funds for the fifth graders, but it served as an ideal opportunity to teach the fifth graders what it takes to run a small business.

Students in Mrs. Spray’s class take charge of the program, although they receive help from other fifth graders and adult volunteers.

The students start by marketing the annual sale. “We put posters up everywhere – even the bathrooms,” one boy said.

The cookie sales were also advertised through the school’s newsletter, the TF Times. Parents were advised that they would be able to purchase a Val-gram for their child during conferences in January.

A box for orders was set up in the school office, so parents could drop off their orders and money anytime throughout the sale, which ran through Feb. 11.

The students were responsible for selling the cookies, keeping track of the personal messages that went along with the cookies and tallying the money they collected during lunch periods the week before Valentine’s Day.

Sales were tracked each day and matched with the money collected. If there wasn’t enough money to match the number of cookie sales, the students weren’t allowed to count those cookies in their total sales.

Each student completed income tracker sheets for each day of the sale, and the students took the day’s receipts to the bank.

Even before the sale was over, the students had to go shopping and start preparing the cookie orders. Because there were more days left in the sale, they used total sales so far to come up with daily averages and estimate how many cookies they would need.

The class decided it would need 2,800 cookies. The first challenge was to take a sugar cookie recipe and multiply the ingredients by 41 batches.

Once they determined how much of each ingredient was needed, four students went shopping at Brink’s Market in Chisago City with Mrs. Spray.

“The students were chosen because they had the top scores in our Gridiron Geography,” Spray said.

At the store, the business lesson continued. “We took our shopping list and compared prices,” one girls said.

Comparison shopping showed that they were better off purchasing eggs by the dozen than the 16-count cartons, for instance.

The students were amazed by the volume of ingredients needed. In the end, 50 lbs. of flour went into the cookies

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