Summer School at the Grocery Store
There are so many summer school possibilities with this activity, and you can make it as simple or complex as you want. It can be a simple activity using only an hour, or it can span the summer and spread to the homes of your child’s buddies who have willing parents.
The Object of this Learning Game
The object of this role-play game is for your child to exercise skills and apply them in a playful, real-life situation. Children will perform organizational and planning activities, perform math operations, write lists with important details, estimate costs and time, and gain important real-life skills. This is a role-playing spy game wherein your child becomes the "agent."
Planning & Playing the Game
Your agent's mission is to gather important intelligence data on the objects in your pantry, refrigerator, and throughout your household. The data is critical to the success of your next requisition mission at 5:00 PM or eighteen hundred hours. Some fun possibilities to make this activity more of an adventure include using walkie talkies, camouflage gear, paper, pencil, calculator, a watch or stopwatch, a backpack for the gear, a flashlight if at night or for closet browsing, snacks, role play, interviews with family members, planted clues throughout the house (also with misleading clues), and any other creative ideas you can involve.
Essential reconnaissance activities for this mission include:
- Estimating how much of specific things your family has used since the last requisition trip to the store.
- What items and how many are there in your house? How many units, ounces or other measures did your family use?
- How many items or units will the family likely use in the future?
- Are there special circumstances coming up that will affect your needs such as a sleepover, visiting relatives, or someone going away to camp?
- How much is this mission likely to cost using intelligence data from grocery store advertisements?
- How much did your family spend on the last supply mission?
- Recording the findings and estimates on charts. Revisiting those charts when it is time to shop again to see if your predictions were accurate. Evaluate the results. Were the estimates accurate? If they weren't, have your agent determine the reason. Help your child determine how to prevent that in the future?
- Can your agent train his friends and their moms or his own sisters and brothers on this process?
- Time-telling skills are a must. Have your agent estimate how long her mission will take. When will it begin? When will it end? What time will important events happen during the mission? Can she calculate the hours, minutes and seconds? Dare we include military time?
- Writing skills such as listing items for the mission (typed, handwritten, or tape recorded) checking the spelling, alphabetizing the items, grouping the items by type or where they are likely to be found in the store. Find the definition of unfamiliar items and link them to similar words or items. (Exactly what is a kiwi fruit? Isn't that word also the name of a bird? How are these things alike, and how are they different? Help your agent brainstorm the names of other fruits and birds.)
- Have your agent track a mystery item using clues that you provide. (I'm red. Your sister doesn't like me. I'm cold right now. You'll find me at a cookout. What am I? Castup.) You can also guide your agent toward the objects using prompts. (You're getting colder or warmer. Go left, right, forward, turn around, go backward, down, or up.)
The variations on this game are limited only by your imagination. Learning games such as these are powerful ways for students to learn in an emotionally engaging way. They will remember these experiences for a long time and will gain valuable experience in applying learned concepts to real-world-like situations. Okay agents, now get going!
