I wanted to introduce Naomi to the concept of using money, and coin recognition. I could think of no better way to do it then to set up our own store! Sitting down and doing a worksheet on money = not so fun. However, setting up a store where you can buy and sell things = SUPER fun! If there is a fun way to learn a concept, I'm all for it!
What do you need for a store? Well, start with....
a daily specials board,
a produce section,
a wide variety of items from your pantry, divided by category and labeled of course,
those little sticky dots so you can put a price on everything, (I did everything in either 1, 5, 10, or 25 cent increments since we were working on coin recognition)
and a cash register with scanner!
Add in a couple of shopping carts, two cute kids, and you are ready to open up your own store, learn about money, and have some fun to boot!
Naomi was super excited and wanted to be the cashier first. In addition to learning about money, it was an excellent opportunity to learn and practice some shopping vocabulary.
Nathan was more than happy to be the first customer!
He went right to the soup section and started shopping.
I had filled their purses with change ahead of time. Nathan would pick an item out of his cart, Naomi would scan it, and look to see how much it cost (by looking at the sticker). Then Nathan would give her a handful of coins, and she had to find the right one. I had introduced Naomi to the coins that morning, and within 5 minutes of playing store, she could recognize and name all the coins. Not bad if you ask me! We didn't work on adding coins together as I didn't want to overwhelm her.
After taking a turn as cashier, Naomi was ready to shop!
She was excited that the fruit was on sale, buy one get one free!
Nathan took a turn being the cashier. Naomi had to look at the price on her item, then find and give Nathan the correct coin.
I was the bagger and put all her groceries into an eco-friendly bag!
As I was bagging Naomi's groceries Nathan wandered away. After a minute he came running over shouting, "Tower, TOWER"! He had made a tower out of the soup cans and was EXTREMELY proud of himself!
He couldn't reach to add any more cans to his tower on the shelf, so we moved it to the ground, and added some vegetables!
All in all our store was a huge success! We left it set up for over two weeks and played with it almost daily. Naomi learned to identify her coins, and most importantly, we all had a lot of fun playing together! I got the idea from this post on No Time for Flashcards, which is my new favorite blog! Take a minute to check it out!
Karla
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