August 30, 2013

A Farmers Market

Stephanie Homeschooling, Learning with Play, outside ideas 4 Comments

A couple of weeks ago my sister and I thought it would be fun to make the girls a farmers market for them to play with in the yard! I thought it would be a fun way to play and learn outside. We used some simple pieces of wood and my hubbie helped put it all together! Add some baskets, and it is a perfect place to play!

The more I have thought about our new addition to our backyard, the more ideas I have had to play and learn together! Here are a few ideas I had:

~ Money: use play money to buy and sell fruits and veggies! It is a fun, easy way to practice using money! Besides what kids don’t want to carry around purses of fake money?

~ Sorting fruits and veggies: It is really interesting to see sometime how many kids are unsure of what is a fruit and what is a veggie! This is something that becomes a point of interest when you are setting up shop!

~ Sharing and Taking Turns: This has been a big lesson here! 🙂 Both want to be the cashier and that means someone needs to take turns. Its no fun at all if you don’t play together and two cashiers with no shoppers is well…..less interesting!

~ Picking out a Meal: Think of how fun it would be to put real fruits and veggies out and letting them “shop” for a real meal! Buy, prepare, and cook with their purchases! We are so doing that.

~ Set Up a Town: With some rearranging, and some creativity, the market can easily turn into any part of a town! Add with our other backyard work center, and swing set, they can have a whole town!

So do you want to make a market of your own? Well….I wouldn’t use my plans! I made them up. But there are a ton of great play ideas out there for simple market sets! You can find some ideas on my Playtime Pintrest Board! What are your favorite Market play ideas?