Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Playing Along - Shop Play

We Play

My girls and I are playing along with everyone over at Childhood101 once again. What fun!



Miss M (3.5) has been playing shops a lot lately so I've been thinking for some time about surprising her with a little shop in our play room. She loves to be the "payer". I like the idea of changing the play environment every so often anyway to keep play varied, fresh and interesting.

Each week a lovely delivery of fruit and vegies comes to our door but I think I like the boxes they come in more than the produce! I've been collecting the small and big black boxes for months for something special like this and so they were perfect for joining together with tape to make the shelves to put our shop items on. I did this part before Miss M and I worked together to stack the (recycled) items for the shop. We've been collecting them for art and play activities so they were ready to go.

Miss M, Miss H and I (and the baby dolls) had fun playing together, taking turns to buy, sell and pack the bags but I'm sure we'll see many more shop games happening with just the girls in the next few days. I'll enjoy watching their role playing.

This game has already encouraged....

  • language/communication skills
  • turn taking/ sharing
  • gentle play
  • role playing

All great things for this big sister, little sister relationship.

We could extend this activity further by....

  • changing the shop to a different type of shop eg: shoes, art, books etc
  • making pretend money - we chose not to since Miss H was involved
  • putting fruit and vegies in
  • talking about healthy teeth food
  • making signs

But for now it's just wonderful to watch the girls at play.

Come play at the Childhood101 We Play link up

11 comments:

Catherine said...

Playing shop is always a hit at my place.

Unknown said...

I love what you did with the boxes! It makes me want to come and shop there too!

Busy Brissy Mum said...

You can most definitely come and play Debbie! When are you free? Let's chat about it sometime. Not sure I have everything to feed your family though.

Christie - Childhood 101 said...

What fantastic boxes, could you please send some over my way? LOL

Shop play is so much fun and such a valuable learning tool.

Busy Brissy Mum said...

Oh I wish I could Christie! You know we are finding the deliveries are really not working so well for us but I want to keep getting them just so I can keep getting the super black boxes. Always a kids worker!!

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

Amazing - I really liked how you also encouraged recycling by turning all those empty container into terrific play space.

Philippa said...

this looks like so much fun!

Busy Brissy Mum said...

Thanks for coming over to Busy Brissy Mum everyone. How fun is We Play! Lots of great play ideas happening.

Melissa said...

That looks like such a fun game. I love the way you set up the shop in the boxes.

Busy Brissy Mum said...

Thanks Melissa. Great to have you stop by.

Be A Fun Mum said...

That is so very sweet. We haven't played shops in a long while. Thanks for the idea!

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