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!

My name is Joanna and I just recently took part in a TREP$ Marketplace at Walter T.Bergen Middle School. I am in 5th grade. I did my TREP$ table on my own and found it very fun. I had gone to meetings after school to learn and prepare for the marketplace. I named my booth Cartooname which is a combination of cartoon and Anime art that I drew. I love Anime (ah-NIH-may), which is a Japanese form of animation.

I had always gone to TREP$ even as a little kindergartener and I couldn't wait to do it myself. Once 4th grade rolled around I was already thinking of what to sell. I had made Perler Bead art for my brother to sell when he did TREP$ but I decided that Perler Beads was not my forte. So when the time came to think of what to do, I chose to sell my artwork and make polymer clay charms called Cabatrons. I also did a raffle for a decorated phone case called a Decoden.

During TREP$ I had leaned what sold and what didn't so I could plan out what to do (and change) for next year. I had met and made friends with people who stopped by my booth that had the same interests in the things I like to draw. I hope to do it next year. It was so much fun.  

Drawing has always been something that I love and I was very happy to see that people understood and liked my style of art.