Shopping with a pre-schooler

I have found a few great ways to occupy the pre-kindergartener while grocery shopping and the best thing is that I can teach her something, too. I thought I'd pass it along in case other harried moms haven't learned this trick. Of course, it took me three kids to get to this point, but hey, I got it eventually.

I always make a shopping list and Little Bit loves to cross off the items as we find them. We have graduated to her finding the word on the list. For instance, we find the milk and then she has to find the word on the list. So, she has to sound out the first letter and determine that it is M and then we try to sound out the rest of the word for her to figure out which word on the list is milk. Some things are harder than others, but she typically figures it out pretty quickly.

I learned a tip from Army of Dad to keep the kids from asking for sweets and junk that isn't on the list. When he would take them shopping when they were little, if they asked for something like Oreos or whatever, he would look at the list and say "Nope, not on here, so we can't get it. " It actually worked, too. Impressive.

I found that letting her hold the list and scratch off the items also frees my hands and keeps her occupied. I'm so going to miss that little bugger in the fall when she's in school all day. *sigh*