Cool Maths for Kids: Playing Cafes

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Make maths for kids fun with this pretend play cafe activity using real money.

cool-maths-for-kids-playing-cafes

 

We have really been enjoying Peakle Pie’s Cool Maths for Kids series and we are delighted to be joining in with a maths activity of our own. We were set the challenge of working money into our maths for kid’s activity. We decided to set up our own Café and combine our love for cutting and sticking into our pretend play activity using real money.

My own childhood memories of maths are that it was the “hard” and “boring”. Therefore I am making a conscious effort to make maths as fun as possible for my own kids. In the hope that they will grow up enjoying it. Maths is so important and the more we can encourage and help our kids with the better.

We have enjoyed a couple of maths activities on the blog so far. We made our Hickory Dickory Dock Felt Learning Clock to work on telling the time. And our 5 Little Ducks number fun activity, which worked on number ordering, number recognition and simple sums.

Both of my sons (aged 5 and 7) having been learning about money in school this year, so this activity provided us with the perfect opportunity to work on reinforcing what they have learnt. We are into our school summer holidays now and as much as I want them to relax and have fun, I am also wary of the dreaded summer slide. Therefore I am building in some fun learning activities along the way, to keep their brains sharp for when they head back to school.

Cool Maths for Kids: Making our Menus

Every café needs a menu, so we decided to put our love of cutting and sticking to good use here to make some menu collages. This was also a good way to involve my 3 year old daughter in the activity as well.

cool maths for kids making menu collages

We had some freebie supermarket magazines in our making box, so I gave one to each of the kids to find food in for their menus. They then set on cutting out items and sticking them down to create their menus. They then added on the prices, using the values that they have each been working up to in school. Freddie has only been working with 1c, 2c and 5c coins, so his café was a bargain, compared to his brother, who has been working with all of the coins and notes up to 10euro.

Whist the boys were kept busy, I sat down with Bella and helped her to select her menu items. She did have a go at cutting a few out, but then delegated that task to me! She couldn’t wait to get on with her favourite part of the activity, gluing them all down! She did get a little carried away though, as she decided to glue some money onto her menu as well!

cool maths for kids toddler

Cool Maths for Kids: Playing Cafes

Once the boys had completed their menus, they were ready to play. They had great fun putting on silly voices pretending to be customers in each other cafes writing their orders and then adding up the prices of each order. They both then did very well in counting out the correct money and my eldest son had good fun counting out change as well.

cools maths for kids playing cafes

They had so much fun with this activity that they got their menus out again the next day and played cafes again.

Do your kids like to play cafes?

 

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4 thoughts on “Cool Maths for Kids: Playing Cafes”

    • Our pleasure Helen. We had planned to get out our play food for this, but then thought this idea would be more fun! It s a great series to be part of, maths is so important but that doesn t mean it has to be boring!

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