The following is a discussion about the shopping experience.
Q: What does a supermarket look like?
A: Supermarkets have many isles with tall shelves. The food is stacked on the shelves. You push trolleys or carry a basket to put the food in. There's a cash register at the front of the shop. The people at the cash register swipe the barcode on the food to add up how much it will cost. Then the person at the cash register puts the food into a bag so you can take it home.
Q: What food do you buy at the supermarket?
A: You can buy breakfast cereal, jam, honey, vegemite, tinned food, spaghetti, rice, pasta, sauce …. And heaps more.
Craft – Threading Pasta
You will need: string with one piece of pasta tied to the end, pasta of different colors.
Step 1: The children thread the string through the pasta
Step 2: The carer then ties the ends to make a necklace
Optional extra – Patterned Pasta
Show the children a pasta necklace that has a pattern in it, such as two green, two blue, two green etc, and ask them what comes next. Make the pattern more challenging by including more colors such as one green, one blue, one yellow, one green … then to again ask the children what comes next. Once the children understand this concept, encourage them to make a patterned pasta necklace.
Indoor game – Food Memory Game
The children are to sit in a circle and each person repeats the food item mentioned by the previous child and adds a new one. For example:
"I went to the shop and bought some eggs," the next child would say
"I went to the shop and bought some eggs and honey," the next child would say "I went to the shop and bought some honey and weet-bix" "I went to the shop and bought some weet-bix and rice" And the game continues. This memory game encourages children to share the familiar food items with the other children. It also helps to develop listening skills and retaining the information and being able to vocalize the information they understand.
Indoor activity – Role Play a Supermarket
You will need: Cereal boxes, tins, tissues boxes, empty milk bottles, a cash register, strips of colored paper for prepare money, baskets to place food in, plastic bags
Optional extra
Draw or stick the numbers 1, 2 and 3 on the shopping items so the children can try to work out basic counting. For example, if bought 2 items that cost 1 dollar how much does it cost in total? Talk about the different shapes of the food items, such as how the cereal box is a rectangular prism. Count the sides of each food item so the children can see how each shape is different. You may even like to talk about the difference between two-dimensional shapes and three-dimensional shapes. The shapes that are flat and drawn on paper are called two-dimensional, and the shapes that you can hold and stick your hand in are three-dimensional.
Outdoor activity – 'Cooking' in the Sandpit
You will need: Muffin tins, cake tins, wooden spoons, mixing bowls, sandpit
Step 1: Show the children each cooking utensils, and ask them what each one is used for. For example, the wooden spoon is used for mixing cake, the muffin tins are used for baking muffins. Ask the children what they need to buy at the supermarket to make a cake. For example to make a chocolate cake you need eggs milk, sugar, butter and coco powder.
Step 2: Place the items in the sand pit
Step 3: Let the children prepare to cook using the items in the sand pit.
Book suggestion
At the Supermarket
by David Hautzig
This book displays the process of how the food gets onto the shelves at the supermarket.
Song – "Ten Milk Bottles"
You will need: 10 milk bottles
Step 1: Place the milk bottles in a row along a table or a shelf.
Step 2: On an A4 sheet of paper write the numbers one to ten in large print. Stick each page in order under the appropriate milk bottle.
Step 3: For the first chorus of the following song nominate one child to knock the number ten. For the second chorus nominate one child to knock the number nine. Continue knocking the milk bottles in chronological order until there are none left.
"Ten milk bottles standing on the wall,
Ten milk bottles standing on the wall,
And if one milk bottle should accidentally fall
There would be nine milk bottles standing on the wall.
Nine milk bottles standing on the wall …. "
(repeat until there are no milk bottles standing on the wall)
This activity asserts the children in recognizing numbers and how they are sequenced. It also makes the use of numbers a tangible concept.