Teaching introductory accounting courses can be both challenging and rewarding. In introductory financial and managerial accounting, students struggle with the unfamiliar terminology and concepts. However, managerial accounting offers distinct challenges in that managerial accounting reports used for decision-making are not publically available, and students are not typically familiar with internal business operations or production processes needed to understand managerial accounting concepts. Therefore, before launching into the theories and concepts of managerial accounting, it would be beneficial to provide students with a common experience or frame of reference. This article describes how to use a simple activity to provide a common understanding of business operations and production processes to use throughout the course. Included is a matrix identifying course concepts and suggestions for referencing the common experience.