Superior Supermarket

Materials:

• Food products (or their empty containers)
• magazines and supermarket circulars
• scissors
• basket, bag, or box
• play currency (optional)
• cooking and serving supplies (optional)

You and your child can enjoy doing the food shopping together, especially when the supermarket is in your own home.

Have your child create a grocery store, complete with various departments: fruits and vegetables, the freezer section, the deli counter, and so on. Your child can draw food items or cut pictures from magazines and supermarket circulars for the grocery stock. Empty cardboard boxes can represent "packaged" goods (pasta, cereals, etc.). Be sure to make play currency too.

Once your child has stocked the supermarket with his or her favorite foods, you can select some products by putting them into a basket, bag, or box. And, while you're shopping, your child can conduct taste tests, sell you on a new food, or demonstrate a new recipe.

Finally, head over to the cash register and let your child ring up your order. Then, you can have your child switch roles with you and take a whirl at shopping-provided you've left any food on the shelves, that is!

More on: Imagination Play

Excerpted from:

© 2005 by Steve and Ruth Bennett. Excerpted from 365 Unplugged Family Fun Activities with permission of its publisher, Perseus Books Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

To order this book visit perseusbooksgroup.com.