It's Market Friday!
Hello, Home Edders! It's been a long time! I hope everything is great over at your end.
As for us, it's pretty much the same in our homeschool. Sometimes smooth sailing, most of the time chaotic. LOL. That's three kids for you.
I've said it before and I know it is also true for most (all) of us, that we focus a lot on life skills - cooking, gardening, chores, social skills, etc. We believe that these practical skills are helpful in molding our little humans for real life.
One of the activities that we enjoy together is grocery shopping. When they were smaller, we just let them come just because they want. Nowadays, I try to be more intentional when taking the kids with me.
1. Making the grocery list.
We started our activity by making a list of everything we needed for the week by discussing meals and snacks that we wanted to make. This helped teach them about meal planning and budgeting, as we talked about the cost of different ingredients and how much we could spend on groceries for the week.
It is also a chance to reinforce writing and spelling. Little Miss volunteered for this task so she could sneak in some items on the list.
2. Social Skills / Interaction
Who says homeschoolers do not have social interactions? I encouraged the kiddos to practice their social skills by interacting with the store employees. There was a moment when Little Man could not find a trash bin, and I asked him to approach the staff to ask for help. He was shy at first but later on managed to do it.
3. Math & Science
I gave them the chance to choose the best fruits and vegetables when we reached the produce section. They learned to check where the fruits and vegetables originated and got to learn a bit about measurements when they weighed the fruits and veggies they picked.
4. Practical Skills
Budgeting is an important practical skill that needs to be learned (and implemented) even at a young age. We need to make sure that we stick to our budget and while there were some distractions (items that they want, but not on the list), they learned to stick with the plan.
We definitely enjoyed this activity. The kids were also tasked to put all the items we bought at the cashier counter - not forgetting to say "Hello" to the cashier on duty.
Going to the grocery with the kids is a very simple activity yet very enriching activity. Not to mention, I am taking advantage of this stage when these little humans still want to come with me to the grocery without hesitation. I know, this will not last for very long now but at least the core learning is there.