Education opens doors for children to explore who and what they want to be as adults. Encouraging kids to be lifelong learners starts in the classroom, but can also be facilitated in extracurricular children’s activity classes and private lessons. If you’re an educator or polyglot looking to teach children or just work on your side hustle, consider launching online or in-person tutoring classes for kids. Teaching world languages and academic topics to children can equip the next generation with tools to master their schoolwork and find their passions in the process. 

If you’re looking to launch a business, but don’t know where to start this guide will help you lay the foundation for your children’s activity business. 

1. Put together a business plan

Whether you’ve founded ten businesses or are launching your first tutoring company, start by following a template. There’s nothing better than staying organized when you’re first starting a business.

Your business plan should have the following pieces: 

• Executive Summary: A simple summary of your business and its mission
• Company Description: A longer description of your company and who and how you serve your community
• Market Analysis: Research and findings focused on the demand for your business as well as competitors in your community and online. 
• Organization and Management: Explain who you employ, their role in your company, and who is responsible for what. If you don’t have employees yet, you can explain your many roles here.
• Services and products you offer: This section is for considerations like what do you teach? Do you sell any products? What kind of subjects do you specialize in? 
• Marketing and sales plan: Add details on how you plan to market your business here. You can evolve this section over time, but we suggest using it to organize your marketing efforts. 
• Financial projections: This section is for considerations like: how much money did you save or borrow to start this business? How much money do you expect to make? Add things like your hourly rates here. 
  

We recommend spending time working on your business plan and being open to letting it evolve as your business starts and grows. Having a strong business plan can be helpful if you are taking out a small business loan, or having outside investment. It shows that you are serious, have professional experience in your field, and have a clear path to profitability. 

2. Decide what you’ll teach

Once you have a plan, it’s time to decide what you’ll teach. Here are some options to get you started. If you’re a teacher, you’ll probably want to launch a business that specializes in your specialty. Whether you specialize in mathematics, sciences, humanities, or social studies, there will be a market for enrichment classes and tutoring opportunities. You can also include games in your academic classes. If you want to learn how to teach chess to kids, check out our guide!

Did you know that there are over 6,000 languages spoken throughout the world? Did you know half the world claims one of ten popular languages as their mother tongue? If you teach languages — or simply love to learn them — teaching children can open up the entire world. And if you decide on Spanish, one of the most popular languages, use our guide with helpful tips and activities for teaching Spanish to kids!

 3. Decide how and who you will teach

Now that you’re determined what you’ll teach, it’s time to think about the who and the how. 

Who

When it comes to learning, you can start at any age! With languages and school subjects, enrichment can take many different forms and prepare kids for lifelong academic success. 

• Toddlers: Toddlers range from 1 year to 4 years of age. Enrichment for toddlers will look a lot like preschool lessons to help children get ready for kindergarten or the basics of a new language! 
• Children: Children range from 5 to 11. Teaching and tutoring school-age children can help them master concepts with extra attention. Children are especially adept at learning new languages through immersion-based classes. 
• Preteens and Teens: This age group ranges from 12-17. Helping preteens and teens through enrichment lessons, academic summer camps, and private tutoring can help them succeed in subjects they might need a little extra help in. 

How

You can teach camps, classes, and tutorials in a few different ways.

• In-person: In-person classes will require a physical space, whether outdoors or indoors is up to you! The beautiful thing about academic classes is that you can teach anywhere with a desk. Consider classrooms, community centers, churches, schools, and parks as potential options. 
• Online: Teaching online is great because you can teach anywhere you have wifi access, including your home! Online classes are especially good for language tutoring because you can use PowerPoint to share content and still speak to your student over Zoom or Google Hangouts. 
• Both: By offering both online and in-person classes, you can reach more students. 
  

4. Build your brand and research your competition 

To launch an online or in-person tutoring business for children, you’ll need to create a brand that’s true to who you are as a teacher. You’ll want to stand out from your competitors by highlighting what makes your business special — perhaps you have rave reviews, case studies of student success, or take an approach that sets you apart from similar businesses in your area or online. Make sure to highlight what makes you unique because in the end, what makes you different is your teacher superpower. 

As you think through building a brand and business, brainstorm what you’ll want to name your business, what your business logo will look like, and how your business will reach customers. 

5. Get ready to multitask

Launching online or in-person yoga or mindfulness classes for kids requires wearing many hats. To get ready, make sure you have skills in the following areas:

• Teacher: Whether you’ve taught for years or are just beginning, opening your own children’s activity business will involve teaching students. Make sure your certifications are up to date and you have client testimonials that speak to your skill as a teacher.
• Business Manager: You’ll need to be prepared to work in every department of your business, including accounting, scheduling, communications, and customer service.
• Technology Master: You’ll need to make sure you’re comfortable with using technology to teach classes, including speakers, registration software, and streaming tools. 
• Role Model: You’re about to start nurturing little hearts and minds with mindfulness! Remember that the children who take a class at your future business will look up to you as a role model. It’s your job to set a good example, always.
  

If you feel like you need practice in these areas, you can investigate taking classes on professional development websites like edX and Lynda. 

5. Get a payment processing and registration system

Once you’ve written a business plan and decided on an in-person or virtual location, you’ll need a way to collect student registrations and payments. When you’re teaching language and academic classes, you’ll want your software partner to feel elegant and delightful so parents can discover and book your classes with ease. When you choose to partner with good registration software, you will also benefit from software automations, automatic deposits, and financial reporting to make it easier to analyze where your business is thriving and where more work needs to be done. 

If you’re starting a children’s activity business, Sawyer Tools has everything you need to make registration easy for your team and your customers. See why thousands of businesses love Sawyer Tools and why you will too. 

6. Connect with your community

Once you have a business plan, location, a team, and powerful registration software, you’ll be ready to start teaching. Our best advice is to connect with your community whenever and however you can. Consider joining local parent Facebook groups, partnering with your local business bureau, offering free trials, and consider hosting free events to get the word out. Connecting with your community is key to unlocking success for years to come! 

We can’t wait to see how your business grows! To get more information on launching your children’s activity business, connect with a member of our team today.