My 5 year old is obsessed with math! She is constantly counting, sorting, and adding things. While at the grocery store yesterday I decided I would create a pretend grocery store at home. My goal was to do it with items we already had at home so it wouldn't cost us anything, and thus I present you "The Grocery Store Game". 
To recreate something similar you will need: - pretend food
- baskets
- cash register and/or calculator
- pad & pen
- pretend or real money
- labels for pricing (I used address labels I had leftover from Christmas)
1) Create the labels for your prices. We kept it simple and made all the prices 1, 2 or 3 cents.
2) Label the food.
3) Sort according to types. My daughter sorted as follows: veggies, fruits, refrigerated items, bakery and cans/cartons.
4) Set up your store. We put the food out in appropriate baskets, set up the cash register, calculator, pad and pencil and baskets/shopping carts. Start to play!
I had my daughter write down the prices on the paper and do the math manually.
Then I had her double-check her math using the calculator.
Lastly the money (pennies) was counted and put in the cash register.
We had a really good time playing! We all took turns acting out different roles and it was a blast. One of my favorite moments was when my son only had 3 pennies left and my daughter explained what items he could afford and which ones he would have to buy next time after he got paid ;) I also loved it when my daughter decided to use their menu board to advertise some sales, she even included an offer for free juice to see if more people would come to her store. Love her way of thinking!
Variations for the future:
- we will change prices as our math improves to have larger digits.
- use other coins as we learn the value of each.
- pay more so change is due back (subtraction).
Objectives covered:
- to recognize numbers
- to be able to write numbers
- basic addition
- counting and using coins (US, Euro, or Canadian)Proudly linking to:
