Grocery Shopping Maths Addition Activity

What do all little kids have in common?

Yes, they think poo jokes are the funniest things in the world, but that’s not quite what I was getting at.

They want to be like adults. They just love to mimic us. You should see my daughter’s impressions of me – man, she is accurate.

When I think about the child wanting to copy us as the adults in their lives, I believe it points to a strong desire to gain independence. 

As adults, we get to decide a lot in our lives and we come across as knowing so much in the eyes of the child. The child also wants freedom of choice and wants to acquire knowledge of pretty much everything.

To support this, I try to find ways that I can involve my child in the rituals of life.

Of course, in Montessori, this is part of the curriculum called ‘Practical Life’ where children are specifically taught skills that they can develop to help them in their daily activities and life in general. Common lessons include pouring, transferring, washing, drying, tidying, sewing, and so on. 

I believe these activities are vital because they give the child purpose, puts them on the track towards independence, and develops intense concentration.

I often hear other Montessori homeschooling parents speak about integrating practical life activities into daily life, such as during breakfast and mealtimes. I find these are good opportunities to work on core skills and this works especially well if you are with your children all day.

However, as a homeschooler who also works, I do have limited time with my daughter to spend on lessons, so I have to make them count.

This is why I try to combine life skills with academics as much as possible, while simultaneously trying to understand and meet my child’s needs and feeding off her interests too.

Here are some activities we’ve done that integrated life skills with academic learning:

• Pouring different coloured water to learn about colour mixing (sensorial & science)
• Using a sieve to fish out magnetic letters from a tray of water to build words (language)
• Following measurements to make oobleck and explore the properties of non-Newtonian fluid (maths and science)
• Scooping different categories of items from a sensory bin and graphing the results (maths)

Most recently though, my daughter has been showing great interest in being involved in shopping trips, identifying items and wanting to know what they cost, and helping with the shopping list.

I observed that she was interested in learning about the relationship between things and money, and that she wanted some responsibility. 

So rather than plan repeated shopping trips, I decided to take a more structured approach – one that wouldn’t require me driving all the way to the shops and spending money each time!

I combined her interest in shopping with the skill of addition and created an activity that I felt would meet her needs.

Shopping List Maths – A Game for Fun Addition Practice

This resource provides a whole list of everyday items that we could realistically go shopping for, each with its own price. This represents the shelves in a supermarket where all the items can be found, along with their prices.

I then created several shopping lists with images of items from the ‘shelves’ so that she would have to find the item, find its price, and then total it all together.

In this way, she would be exercising multiple skills such as scanning for the relevant items, cross-referencing with her list, identifying the items with the correct prices, and totalling it all together.

I felt these processes were reflective of the real stages of supermarket shopping – so we could practise these crucial life skills alongside developing her academic skills (mathematics).

She absolutely adored this activity and asked to ‘play shopping’ repeatedly! WIN!

We used our DIY’d Montessori coloured beads to add up the totals, but any manipulatives would work too. And when she’s older, without the manipulatives, the activity would be fantastic for mental maths practice!

As a home educating mum with limited resources, I know I value the free content out there. It truly helps me educate my child without having to eat into precious savings.

Don’t forget to come and connect with me on Instagram: @salaammummy.

Salaam x