Meet Paxton
Photos Near and Far
 Hi, my name is Paxton and I'm a ten-year-old, fifth grader from Helen Morgan School in Sparta, New Jersey. I participated in my first TREP$ Marketplace on February 24, 2015. In the beginning, we had meetings that were held on Fridays after school. We were put in groups and learned about making advertisements and how that's important in getting people to buy your products. For this, we had a candy bar challenge where we made a label for our candy bar. My group's was called TCBC which stood for "The Country's Best Chocolate." Another week we were learning about how to make products to sell. We were given popsicle sticks, paper clips, clothes pins, pipe cleaners and they each had a price which we had to add up to figure our costs. We needed to know how to manage our money based on how much our product would cost to make versus how much we could charge for our product. From these objects we made a catapult called "Project. Dragonfly." The product we made launched a dragonfly made of a clothespin and two paperclips. It was very successful. Another week, we created an advertisement and jingle for canned vegetables. Our jingle went like this, "Ninety-nine cents for veggies today, ninety-nine cents per can. Ninety-nine cents for veggies today, ninety-nine cents for veggies, hurray!" We had a lot of fun with that and kept singing the jingle. The name of my final product for our TREP$ Marketplace was "Photos Near and Far." For this, I made notecards and framed photos of local scenery in New Jersey, as well as landscapes of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the Galapagos Islands (I borrowed photos with permission from my sister), and Park City, Utah. I had the idea for the frames and my grandmother gave me the idea for the notecards because people always need to send thank you notes, so this might be a product that would sell. I had fun taking the photographs. My mom and I took walks in the snow to get really good local pictures. I also enjoyed designing the cards and getting them printed. I also enjoyed creating a design for my company. The night of the Marketplace, I was prepared with a tablecloth and books to help present my photos and cards. I also had a poster for advertising. I was nervous at first, but after a few sales, and a few smiles, I was more comfortable. By the end of the night, I had $258. After costs, and subtracting the change I had brought with me, I made a profit of $98.22. I definitely want to do this again! |