Preschool Grocery Store Theme

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Our Grocery Store

If you recall from this post, our Grocery Theme arose out of the minds and interests of the children.  It developed into a wonderful opportunity to explore many concepts and ideas.


CONCEPTS EXPLORED
Where food comes from
Money and exchanging goods
Foods and food pyramid and food groups
Mass and volume (how much can you fit and carry in your shopping bag?)
Representation (coupons and food items)
Written and verbal language (lots of these activities involved use of language and exploring new vocabulary)
Trying new foods
Whole foods (cutting and exploring the entire apple instead of just the slices)
Cooperation and give-and-take at the cashier lane

ACTIVITIES
-Grocery Hunt in the yard

bean bowls, mixing beans and glue

printing lasanga noodles with carrot stick stampers

Maria hosted a market, where children got to purchase their own fruits for snacktime

Leslie made a scale out of a hanger so children could compare weights of wooden foods and other objects

Fruit prints (shaking paper + paint + fruit counters in salad containers to make prints)

 

Cutting apples to look, feel, taste, and smell

Washing fruits and veggies activity 

Cutting out coupons from the newspaper 

Children dictate their own recipe cards

Fruit and veggie stamping

Veggie and fruit stickers on strips of paper (that became a language activity as children talked about the foods on the stickers, and also these became crowns!

Create your own pizza on a paper plate

PROPS AND LEARNING MATERIALS ADDED TO THE CLASSROOM

Re-usable shopping bags and real groceries, like cans of food, cracker boxes, empty bottles of spices, etc.

A coupon matching game

A barn game (that's where food comes from, right?)

Fruits and veggies and strawberry baskets in the sensory table

Plastic eggs and pom pom matching game

A fruit and veggie sorting game

The cashier lane...a big hit...equipped with blanket receipts and a crayon, printed and laminated money in a silverware tray "cash drawer", and a keyboard "cash register".

Allowed the children to "unload" their groceries into other areas of the classroom, if they agreed to put them away when they were done playing the game

BORROWED BOOKS FROM THE LIBRARY

OTHER COOL STUFF

Based on Veggie Soup, we made veggie soup!  We also...

...went to the grocery store

...and received a visit from some baby chickens

Songs and circle time activities:

• We changed the song "Apples and Bananas" to having the kids take turns saying what they like to eat, and then we would sing that.  For example, "Mary likes to eat, eat, eat, broccoli and carrots".
• Categorizing foods into food groups
• Exploring food colors
• Grocery store yoga!
• Shavasana: "the dinner plate pose"
• Bow pose: "shopping basket pose"
• Windmill pose: "picking berries and putting them in the basket"
• Reaching high: "reach the cereal on the top shelf" pose
• Squats: "hold your shopping cart while you exercise" (pretending we are holding the handle of the shopping cart while doing squats)
• "Ridin' in the Car" song from the Music Together Family Favorites album, and pretending we are riding to the grocery store

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For the fellow teachers out there, I'm including our initial brainstorm...boy, how a theme can develop!
Carts
money matching
food projects/recipes
cookbooks
grocery clerks
bakery
food pyramid
making grocery store in classroom
food and fruit puzzles
cooking
cooler icepacks
recipes and books
coupons
farmers’ market
garden
 farm
 healthy eating