Middle:Children will take turns “shopping” the market, use the house area table as a register stand, and have their very own market.
Earlier: Have an empty toy register, and pretend. Later: Have the children create a stand out of a large cardboard box, and implement the money/price of the items. For example saying “your total is two dollars” and having the shopper give the market worker two pieces of the play money.
End:Five-minute warning, then three-minute, final one-minute warning and the children will clean up.
Follow-up Ideas:To continue this activity the children can hand-make/bring in more items to be sold and use higher quantities of money.
Assessment:The children thoroughly enjoyed being the market worker and having the sense of money. It encouraged them to count, and participate in give-take conversations with each other. The children used plastic hand baskets and picked up play food as a “shopper” while another student sat at the register giving them a price for their items. The children were able to gain building their relationships amongst each other. The children were a little too eager to use the money, resulting in maybe laminating it for it not to be ripped.