Our Spring Time theme certainly brought out the flowers! We have been reading a lot of stories about gardens, flowers, and colors. We have also been watching the flowers bloom around us. When I bought a rainbow of flowers for Buga’s sensory bin I made sure to buy extras for this little “store front business”. Buga is the owner, operator, and manager of her own little flower shop. We use colorful flowers to reinforce color identification as well as build our counting skills…all the while working on following directions and communication skills. I love how versatile and fun this play set has become. We both enjoy creating bouquets – our business sure is blossoming!
Here’s Buga taking Phone Orders. We have a pretend phone to take orders, a notepad to keep track of the orders, and a cash register for the customers to pay for their bouquets.
Each type flower is categorized in its own cup and labeled with a corresponding picture / color / and price tag. This enables us to keep track of our inventory while sorting colors and keeping things organized – making it easier to fulfill orders!
Each flower is currently 1c each – to help reinforce 1 to 1 ratio, counting, and numbers. When Buga gets a little older (or maybe the next time we play) I will make some of the flowers cost more so she begins to associate bigger numbers with more money. For now we use pennies to count and pay for our bouquets.
I made and laminated customer order cards to keep in the bin. Buga can take out a customer order card and build a bouquet with these visual “recipe cards”.
“Can you make a bouquet with these flowers…?”
I drew pictures of the flowers, added their numeral, and marked their color in written form so Buga can begin to associate the words with the corresponding objects. It has been a great way to understand symbols and reinforces direction-following. Due to the structure of the cards, she doesn’t even need me to read or interpret them. She can do it all by her little business self!