Survive the grocery store with kids! Educational and Fun!

Posted on September 27, 2013 by Jules Prokop, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Every Parent has a grocery store horror story, whether its weekly, monthly or even yearly it can be traumatic not only for you but your children too. As a single mom, my choice was to make the necessary weekly trip into a fun, easy experience for me and a fun and educational one for my kids. We play “Super Market Sweep” Yes, you 80′s kids better remember this awesome TV game show!! Well, its not the same exactly and you can modify this as much as you need for different age ranges.
Pre Shop
Make sure everyone has eaten within an hour of going to the store, apple slices on the way will do!
Prepare a list of needed items, categorize in departments. Dairy, Frozen, produce, Bakery etc…
Explain to the kids expectations and rules with rewards for the game and any other expectations you would like to see.
The Game
Objective: To Find the correct Item first and put in the cart.
Real Objective: Teach about nutrition, food choices, real world math and smooth sailing!
Winner: Individual or team with the most correct items found.
Prize: Winning team gets to do the self checkout and/or gets to pick an item from the store (favorite cereal or gum…set limit)
Bonus: Whoever guesses the total grocery bill the closest $dollar amount wins a bonus prize. Do this while in line, take all final answers before the first item hits the scanner!
How the game is played:
Break kids into teams, have them create a team name. if you have 2 kids, easy. If you have multiple the teammates rotate taking turns and they can encourage each other. If you have 1 child, you can compete against time.
Choose an item on your list when your in the specific department and present clues to the children of the items…(no prep needed, wing it based on your list) Example: While in the produce section: they are yellow, monkeys like them and they are full of potassium! Make sure your teaching them the benefits to healthy choices and the negatives to potential not so good choices. Example: We only eat this every now and then because its full of sugar, there are lots of flavors to choose from, its cold and Dads favorite flavor is cookies and cream…..Ready…GO!
Remind them of the guidelines and expectations along the way if they get rowdy etc…
Between every department transition have them tally up there scores and figure out how many more they may need to beat the other team etc… (math skills)
adjust the rules as necessary to work for your family…you can rotate kids if you think they will be too competitive and fight!
In Line- congratulate all of them, Take there Bonus Grocery Bill Total guess (see rules) and award the winners there prize.
Get them involved in self checkout and bagging, assign a bagging captain, car loader, unloader etc…
Post Game
Ask them what other games in the store they may want to play
Ask them if they thought the food choices were more money or less money than they thought…that discussion can turn into several other discussions
Turn up the music and jam on the way home! Celebrate your grocery store win!
I hope you enjoy this as much as my kids and I
~Mama J