Playing Grocery Store

"Thank you for shopping with us, please come again," Twiggy said as she handed me a brown lunch sack filled with plastic food.

Since Sunday afternoon, we have played "grocery shop" nonstop.  I promise you I played for two straight hours the other morning while Z napped!

It all started when Twiggy was throwing a fit that she wanted her daddy to play Barbies with her.  But Kee was cooking dinner, so he couldn't.  I suggested that we play grocery store.  She was hooked!  I thought this would be a good opportunity for her to practice her counting skills and numeral recognition (not her strong suites at the moment).

We first had to place price tags on all of our merchandise. She chose between making a 1, 2, 3, or 4 for her price stickers.  Then she carefully set up all her wares across the toy room.

I told her we had to have money to buy the groceries (and I think during one of my last toy room purges I threw our pretend money away).  We decided we could make some "dollars."  I showed Twiggy what a real dollar looked like.  She took the green slips of construction paper, drew a face in the middle and some pseudo letters and numbers in the corners.  We were ready! 

 

Armed with her purse and shopping cart (or buggy as my WV husband calls it) she made her way through our pretend store.  She carefully selected items to put in her cart.  When she came to the checkout, we placed all the food on the table and counted it.  If she had four things, she owed four dollars.  With an older child you could actually add up the price tags, but this was too advanced for my daughter. 

Z and Twiggy shopping til they drop!

Paying for her groceries!

While playing, Twiggy learned some new vocabulary.  She learned that a "shopper" is also called a customer and that a "payer" is called a cashier.  She learned to ask the cashier what aisle  certain foods could be found in. 

And for those of you who are worried...don't worry Daddy was able to join in the fun.  We made him the bagger!  He even played the part of the customer outfitted with the pink sequin purse.  I'm just mad that I didn't get a picture!!!