The supermarket is the shop children know best. They’ve walked the aisles, watched items get scanned, and seen the total appear on screen. A grocery store game lets them step behind the counter and run the whole show themselves.
myplayshop’s supermarket is stocked with familiar items — apples, milk, bread, cereal — each with realistic prices. Your child scans them, adds up the total, takes the customer’s money, and gives correct change.
Why the Grocery Store Works So Well for Learning
Grocery shopping is the most relatable money context for children. They’ve experienced it dozens of times. This familiarity means:
- Prices feel real — They know an apple costs less than a box of cereal
- Quantities make sense — A family buying milk, bread, and fruit is a scenario they’ve seen
- The process is familiar — Scanning, paying, getting a receipt — they’ve watched it happen
This familiarity lowers the cognitive load. Instead of learning a new game AND new maths, children can focus on the maths because the setting is already understood.
What Your Child Does
Stocks the shelves: The supermarket comes with a full range of grocery products. Each has a name, a picture, and a price that matches real-world expectations.
Serves customers: Customers arrive with a selection of groceries. Your child scans each item by tapping it, watching the register total climb with each scan.
Handles money: The customer pays — sometimes with exact change, sometimes with a larger note. Your child counts the payment and, if needed, gives the right change back from the till.
Reviews the day: The End of Day Report shows how many customers were served, total sales, and how accurately change was given.
Learning Through Grocery Maths
Grocery shopping creates naturally varied maths problems:
- Small totals: A single apple for $0.99
- Medium totals: A basket of five or six items reaching $8–$12
- Repeated items: “Two cartons of milk” means doubling a price
- Round numbers and tricky ones: Some totals come out to clean numbers, others don’t
This variety keeps the maths fresh. Your child isn’t solving the same problem repeatedly — each customer brings a different combination.
Tips for Supermarket Play
- Start with small baskets — Fewer items means simpler totals. Build up as confidence grows
- Talk about prices — “That milk costs $1.49. If someone buys two, how much is that?”
- Make it real — Take your child to an actual supermarket and compare prices. “The apples are $0.99 in your game and $1.20 here — which shop is cheaper?”
- Play together — You be the customer with a long shopping list. Your child has to keep up!
Pair With Other Shops
Once your child has mastered the supermarket, they can try the bakery (smaller, more focused) or toy shop (higher prices, bigger change). Each shop type offers a different flavour of the same core skills.