Five Minute Math- Let’s Go Shopping! A quick and easy math activity for families

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Thanks for supporting Montessori Math Studio!

—

So much of our money use is digital- from credit cards to apply pay, few people carry around and use cash. While this is convenient for adults, children miss out on observing the exchanging of money.

In this week’s five minute math activity, we seek to make money use visible, by playing store! This activity does take a little more time to set up compared to some of our other activates, but the fun and learning is worth it!

How to do it:

1. Gather your materials: for this activity, you will need:

• money: real paper money or play money (here is a realistic set that my children love)
• objects to ‘sell’: these can by anything, from fruit to books to toys. Aim for about five objects to start
• Paper and pencil, for writing prices

1. Create your store: set out your items and label them with prices. To start, I recommend using whole dollar amounts ($1, $6, $12). As your child gets more comfortable, you can begin incorporating coins
2. ‘Pay’ your child: give your child enough money to buy one or two items, but not all of them.
3. Go shopping! help your child select items. While you shop, you can talk about how much all the items will cost and if your child has enough money to buy what they want. Practice adding the totals. Encourage them to put back items if they need to- after all, we can’t buy something if we don’t have enough money!
4. Check out: act as the cashier and ‘sell’ your child their items. Model adding up their total purchase and giving change. When you’ve finished, give your child a different amount of money and play again!

If you tried this activity, we’d love to hear how it went. And don’t forget to subscribe to our page and follow us on social media (@montessorimathstudio) for more great math information and tips.