Learning Mathematics - Activities for the Grocery Store: Kindergarten through Grade 2 (page 2)

Mathematics at the Grocery Store — Activities

The grocery store is one of the best examples of a place where the ability to use mathematics is put to work in the "real world." It's a great place to practice measurement and estimation and to learn about volume and quantity and their relationships to the sizes and shapes of containers—geometry!

Preschool: One Potato, Two Potatoes

Making a grocery shopping list can be both enjoyable and an opportunity to reinforce young children's number sense.

What You Need

• List of grocery items
• Color pictures of grocery items cut from magazines, catalogs or advertising flyers (for example, choose pictures of different kinds of vegetables, fruit, containers of milk or juice, cans of soup, boxes of cereal and crackers, loaves of bread)
• Index cards (or similar-sized cards cut from heavy paper)
• Glue stick
• Small box (large enough to hold the cards)

What to Do

• Put together the set of food pictures and help your child paste each picture onto a card. Then have your child sit with you as you make up a grocery shopping list. Read the list aloud to her, item by item, saying, for example, "We need to buy milk. Find the picture of the milk." When the child finds the picture, have her put it in the box. Continue through the list, asking her to find pictures of such things as apples, potatoes, bread, soup and juice.

• When you've finished, ask your child to tell you how many things you need to buy, then help her to count the pictures in the box.

• Ask your child to put all the pictures of vegetables in one group, then all the pictures of fruit in another group. (You might continue with items that are in cans, items that are in boxes and so on.)

• Point to one group of pictures, such as the fruit. Help her to count the number of pictures in that group. Have her do the same for other groups.

Grades 1-2: Clip and Save

Coupons can be used to help children learn the value of money as well as to let them show off their addition and subtraction skills.

What You Need

• Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters
• Grocery store coupons
• Pencil and paper

What to Do

• Show your child a grocery store coupon for a product that he likes to eat and have him count out coins to show how much money the coupon saves on the product. For example, if the coupon is for 30 cents off a jar of peanut butter, give your child nickels and dimes and tell him to count out three dimes or six nickels. Give your child all the coins and challenge him to figure out how many different coin combinations he can make to total 30 cents.

• Ask your child how much money you can save with two or three 20-cent coupons. Show him the other coupons and ask him how much money could be saved with each one. Have him write the amounts and then add them to show how much could be saved if all the coupons were used.

Grades 1-5: Put It Away

Putting away groceries helps children develop classifying and mathematical reasoning skills and the ability to analyze data.

What You Need

• Groceries

What to Do

• Make a game out of putting away groceries. As you empty the bags, group the items according to some common feature. You might, for example, put together all the items that go in the refrigerator or all the items in cans.

• Tell your child that you're going to play "Guess My Rule." Explain that in this game, you sort the items and she has to guess what rule you used for grouping the items.

• After your child catches on to the game, reverse roles and ask her to use another "rule" to group these same items. She might, for example, group the refrigerator items into those that are in glass bottles or jars and those in other kinds of packaging. She might group the cans into those with vegetables, those with fruit and those with soup. When she's regrouped the items, guess what rule she used.