Preschool Shopping

Lets Go Shopping!!

Preschool’s current Unit of Inquiry is from the transdisciplinary theme ‘How We Express Ourselves’ and is exploring the central idea:  “Through play we explore our feelings and ideas and come to new understandings”. As part of ‘Tuning In’ to this unit, the children designed play areas that they would like to set up in preschool. These included a police station, a fire station, a robot area, a dinosaur dig, a magical castle and a toyshop. In groups they then set up these areas and told their friends the different types of play that could happen there.

The teachers observed the play to look at how to further develop social skills and for opportunities for further learning. Here is an example from the toyshop.

The children made a toyshop. They collected toys, wrote price labels for them and put money into moneyboxes. The children took it in turns to be the customer or the shopkeeper. The customers chose toys and counted out the right amount of coins. The shopkeeper told the customers how much the toys cost, put the price on the till and then collected the money. The children then explored the concept of making shopping-lists; recording what they wanted to buy, how much this would cost and how much money they would need.