We are so excited to share our new Cutting Edge Grocery with you!
This is such a great thing for our kiddos! When you walk into Cutting Edge Grocery you will see the various cart and basket options, some of which your kiddos may recognize from going to the store with you.
Produce Station
Next up is our beautiful produce station! We try to keep a variety of fruits and vegetables on hand, and we can use this opportunity to talk about healthy food choices. Next to the fruit and vegetables is something else your kiddos might recognize—a grocery bag dispenser and zip ties, just like they see in the store. This is another way that our kiddos can practice their fine motor skills, as they tear off the bags and choose and tie the zip ties.
How To Find Grocery Items
Further, into the store we have our shelving, with beautiful signage up above, just like in the store, that tells the kids where they are and how to find the items they need. This helps them to practice environmental awareness, and how to find different things, and how to plan for finding and gathering items on their list.
When kids come into the store, they will have to find the items they need on their grocery list, check the price tags for different prices, and check for any sales that we might have going on. They will learn about the differences between quantity and weight for an item.
Problem Solving
In other words, there are several problem-solving components they will be working on! The kids will have to decide what to do if there’s an item that’s on their list, but not in stock. Is it something that they can find a substitution for? Or is it something that they need to buy somewhere else? Or do they need to find another solution, like ordering online?
They will also have to make sure they are managing the shopping cart well, taking care to not bump into walls or fixtures. This is another piece of learning environmental awareness, as well as the physical skills of managing the cart.
Working in a Grocery Store
In addition to having the kids come in and manage their shopping list, we can flip this around and have them work on vocational skills. We might work on taking inventory of the items we do have on the shelves. We might work on stocking according to different inventory lists. We might do plan-o-grams, where we might have to adjust the positioning of different items on the shelves.
We also get to work on the whole checking out process, and what it means to be a cashier! We have a fully-functioning cash register. It’s uploaded with every piece of the inventory we have in our store. The kids will be able to log in and train on it. They can scan items, calculate change, give change, work the register, manage the receipt system—everything! We have a scale so that they can work with weighing fruits and veggies and working out the price from that. We have a bagging station so that they can work on those skills. They can do anything they would have to do at a real store!
Your Next Step
We can’t wait for you to “shop” in our store! Make sure you see our video on our Facebook page or YouTube Channel so that you can see for yourself what an amazing thing this is going to be for our kiddos. We can’t wait to see you here!
