Grocery Store Lesson Plan

Courtesy of Tami L. Maldonado-Mancebo
Early Childhood Curriculum Consultant, Omaha Public Schools

This themed unit allows students to develop a variety of academic skills as they explore how grocery stores work.

Download a printable version of this lesson plan.

Learning Objectives: Students will learn about the food pyramid and about how we get the food we have in our homes. Words that will be discussed include: produce, meat, canned goods, boxed goods, grocer, cashier, cash register, shopper, food pyramid, coupons, and money.

Arts & Crafts Center

Food Prints

Set out a variety of clean, empty food containers, such as egg cartons, cereal boxes, chip packages, yogurt tubs, and milk cartons. Also set out poster board squares, brown paper bags, glue, tape, yarn pieces, and scissors.

Allow students to work alone or with partners to use the containers to make unique creations. Display their finished work around your room.

Food Collage

Have students cut out pictures of grocery items from magazines and newspaper ads and create a collage by gluing them onto construction paper.

Literature Center

Create a class book about grocery stores. Have each student illustrate a page about his or her favorite thing in a grocery store. Have the student either write or dictate a sentence about what they drew. Bind the pages together and read it to the class.

Science/Discovery Center

Weighing Food

Place a number of items on a balance scale. Discuss which foods are lighter or heavier than others. Which foods weigh the same? Can you get both sides to balance?

Compare and Contrast

Encourage students to use a magnifying glass to compare the texture of the skin on different kinds of fruits like a cantaloupe, apple, banana, or a coconut. Discuss the words smooth, rough, bumpy, etc.

Food Pyramid

Encourage kids to learn about the food pyramid and what foods they should have the most of to keep them healthy.

Steps:

1. Have a copy of a food pyramid or make the pyramid shape on a wall.

2. Leave the pyramid squares all blank for the children to put in the food items. Have a piece of paper in each section that names that part of the pyramid, such as breads.

3. Talk to the children about what the pyramid represents and what each section is about.

4. Use pictures of foods and have the children try to put the food in the correct section of the pyramid.

5. After they are done, let them look at what they made and go through the whole pyramid together as a class, talking about all the examples in each section.

6. Discuss food portions and servings and how much of each serving they are to have a day.

Math Center

Grocery Store Sizes

Set out small and large clean, empty containers of items such as canned veggies, boxed cereals, milk cartons, and yogurt tubs. Talk about the sizes of the items. Then mix up the items and ask each student to find the small-size yogurt, the large-size can of corn, and so forth. Encourage them to divide the items into two groups: small sizes and large sizes.

Have the students bring in their favorite empty cereal boxes. Cut out both large sides of the boxes. Cut one side into 6 or more puzzle pieces and the other side is the example for when he/she is building the puzzle.

Dramatic Play Center

Grocery Store

Set up a grocery store play center in the dramatic play area. Fill the area with empty food containers, such as cereal boxes, milk cartons, plastic bottles, milk cartons, egg cartons, yogurt tubs, soup cans, plastic fruits and veggies or sturdy produce (such as oranges and potatoes) a scale, play money, brown paper bags, and shopping baskets.

Ask parents to save old food packages (ketchup, mayonnaise, cereal, etc…) to use to stock the shelves in your “grocery store.” Let students take turns being grocery store workers and shoppers.

Conveyor Belt

To make a conveyor belt, loop black paper around a table and the paper will roll just like a conveyor belt. Students will be able to place food on the belt and move it forward toward the cash register and cashier. Students can take turns running the cash register and conveyor belt.

Grocery Carts

Use large boxes with all the flaps, except on the narrow ends, tucked into the box. Use the open flap as the handle. Let the students cut or glue on silver metallic paper, aluminum foil, or duct tape to give the metal appearance of a real cart. Push them around the room or the play store.

Puppet Center

Have students create puppets using paper and craft sticks. They can use the puppets to recreate events that might take place in a grocery store.

Block Center

Encourage students to construct grocery stores out of blocks. They can also use trucks to pretend that they are delivering food to the stores.

Cooking Center

Apple Sandwiches

Slice apples the "round way" so that a star is formed in the center. Spread a slice with peanut butter and top with a second slice to form a sandwich. You won't need to core the apples if the slices are thin.

Banana Pops

1. Insert a skewer into each banana half and freeze until firm.

2. Melt together peanut butter, marshmallows and margarine.

3. Cool slightly and pour the mixture into a tall narrow glass.

4. Dip each frozen banana into the peanut butter mixture, coating evenly.

5. Immediately roll in the toppings and freeze. For longer storage, wrap each banana pop in aluminum foil before returning to the freezer.

Your frozen treats will be ready within an hour.

Games

Grocery Shopping Game

Set out five or more grocery items and discuss them with your group. Choose one student to be the “shopper” and have the other students close their eyes. Let the shopper choose one grocery item and put it in a brown paper bag. When the other students open their eyes, have them try to guess which item the shopper “bought” to put in the bag. The first student to guess correctly gets to be the shopper for the next round of the game. Continue until everyone has had a turn.

Grocery Coupon Fun

Use grocery store advertising ads or other sources to find coupons for the following activities…

Coupon Match

Select five or more matching pairs of coupons. Mix them up and place them in a pile. Invite your students to search through the coupons and find the matches.

Coupon & Product Match

Set out several coupons for different canned products along with the actual canned items. Let the students match the coupons to the canned goods.

Coupon Holders

For a fun gift, have the students decorate letter-size envelopes by rubber-stamping on prints of fruits and veggies. Write “Coupons” on the envelopes over the prints. Then slip a grocery coupon into each envelope and encourage the students to give their gifts to the food shoppers in their families.

Create Coupons

Have students create their own coupons using crayons, markers, construction paper, and old magazines. Cut out pictures of foods and other items from grocery store ads and glue them on index cards. Write the names of the items on each card and laminate them. Then use them for a variety of activities. For example, if you make a double set, you can play matching games. Students can also use them in the dramatic play center to make grocery lists in the play store. They can also sort them into categories: fruits, vegetables, healthy foods/non-healthy foods, edible/not edible, etc.

Grocery Store Scavenger Hunt

Have each student find 5 letter A’s on a sign, or in a product you have in your “store.” In the next aisle, do the letter B. Preschoolers love to show you they know their letters.

Large Group Activities

Shopping Song (Sung to the tune of “Farmer in the Dell”)

“A shopping we will go, a shopping we will go,

We will buy some vegetables, a shopping we will go.

A shopping we will go, a shopping we will go,

We will buy some cinnamon buns, a shopping we will go.

A shopping we will go, a shopping we will go,

We will buy some wonderful snacks, a shopping we will go.”

What Will You Buy?

What will you buy? What will you buy?

What will you buy at the grocery store?

Jars and cans. Jars and cans.

Jars and cans at the grocery store.

Apples and bananas. Apples and bananas.

Apples and bananas at the grocery store.

Meat and veggies. Meat and veggies.

Meat and veggies at the grocery store.”

Culminating Activity

Grocery Store Field Trip

Plan a field trip for a "behind the scenes" tour of a grocery store. Your students will enjoy seeing were trucks are unloaded and where the food is stored before being put on the shelves.

Now that your students have explored how grocery stores work, look for more fun lesson plan ideas.