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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
All kindergartners love a chance to indulge their imagination, whether it’s telling a funny story or digging through the dress up box for a reader’s theater. There’s nothing better, however, than when you can incorporate some of your core academic subjects into a dramatic play center, and having your students play shopkeeper gives you so many opportunities for multi-leveled learning. This burger stand math fun packet gives you everything you need to teach kindergarten counting money skills while they think they’re just playing at being a McDonald’s worker.
Using The Burger Stand Math Fun Packet
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There are two main ways of using this dramatic play center packet. Firstly, you can leave it as an open opportunity for students to practice learning to count money. This would be where students go up and use the menu to order food that they want to eat (listen out for the wild and crazy burgers that they order!). This is a great way to introduce the burger stand to your math center rotations, and you’d be well advised to buy a burger stand play food set so that the shopkeepers can actually make the specific burgers.
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The second way is to take some of the pre-made orders found at the end of the packet and have students calculate the costs of each of the burgers. This pushes those students who like to make life easy for themselves, as well as giving words to students who are unsure about what to order. You can also have students make their own order cards as they get the hang of how to play with the burger stand, as well as give them blank cards to play as wait staff for a larger group of customers.
Learning With This Dramatic Play Center
A shopkeeping center in your classroom has many possible learning opportunities for your kindergarten students to get engaged with:
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Money math – the most obvious skill that your kindergarteners will learn through this burger stand math fun is how to handle money, the value of the different coins and notes, and simple mental addition and subtraction to keep the game going. Having your students learning to count money through play makes this typically dry topic become the highlight of the year.
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Writing orders – writing in kindergarten can feel like a chore some days as students don’t have the vocabulary, spelling or stamina to write sustained pieces. However, having them write short orders from their burger stand customers to give to their chef is a great way of giving them a purpose and audience for their writing skills.
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Socializing – the hidden subtext behind all of this academic learning is that this burger stand game teaches students about how to socialize with each other: how to take turns, listen to orders, use their manners to get what they want and generally how to act in a commercial setting. You’ll be able to learn about them as you watch them play, and then get to teach them how to become responsible citizens as you model appropriate interactions.
Like this? Then you’ll love my 10 Ice Cream Themed Literacy and Math Centers. These easy-prep games will get your students working on letters, phonics, numbers and more!
Games included:
1) Ice Cream Letter Case Clipcards – match the upper and lowercase letters
2) Sight Word Scooping – find the correct lettered scoops to form the sight word on the cone
3) What’s The Letter Scoop? – pick a letter card and color it in the recording sheet; upper and lowercase provided
4) Ice Cream Code Words – set of 12 coded words provided with the decoder and answer sheet
5) Ice Cream Shop Tracing Lines – pre-writing practice of tracing the path the kids need to take to the shop
6) Banana Split Number Order – fill in one more and one less number from the one shown
7) Ice Cream Cone Shape Matching – 13 different shapes
8) Ice Cream Counting Clip Cards – count the number of scoops to 20
9) Ice Cream Ten Frame Matching – place the cherry with the correct number that matches the ten frame on the scoop
10) Popsicle Stick Number Formation Cards – can be used as flashcards or number formation activity with popsicle sticks or other manipulatives
Check it out for more ready-to-go fun!
Food Theme Books For Kindergarten:
More Free Food Themed Printables:
1) Burger Stand Math Fun – This burger-themed printable will help your students do simple addition in their heads in such a fun way and introduce them to the concept of calculating money as they manage a pretend cafe.
2) Fruit and Vegetable Color Clipcards – Preschoolers and kindergarteners will learn to identify colors while working on their fine motor strength.
3) Peanut Butter and Jelly Alphabet Matching – 2 piece puzzles where your students will learn to match upper to lowercase letters.
4) Ice Cream Measurement Cards – Kids work on math and measurement in this summer-themed ice cream printable.
5) Count The Marshmallows 1-10 – Kids love marshmallows – eating them, playing with them, and now, they’ll love counting them too!
6) Gingerbread Number Puzzle Strips – Set of 3 differentiated gingerbread-themed number puzzles including one with dice representation.
7) Farmers Market Activities Pack – This pack of 5 activities is the perfect opportunity for kids to learn about healthy eating.
8) Autumn Apples I Spy – 3 differentiated levels of I Spy games perfect for an apple-themed learning unit.
9) Fruit and Vegetable Activity Pack – Preschool fruit and vegetable activity pack of 5 printable games.
10) Watermelon 4-piece Number Puzzles – These 4-piece watermelon number puzzles will keep your children entertained while working on early math skills like number recognition, counting and subitizing.
Educational Tools For Your Classroom:
Browse My Most Popular Math Printables:
1) Parking Cars Tracing Lines – More than 10 different tracing line patterns to choose from, all of which help with pencil control.
2) Scarecrow Arrange By Size – 3 different scarecrow-themed image sets that they will arrange from smallest to biggest.
3) Bumblebee Addition Game – Solve the sum and help the bee land on the correct flower!
4) Farm Shapes Mats – Use playdough, pompoms, stickers etc to learn 2D shapes.
5) Popsicle Stick Number Formation – Kids will love forming the numbers 1 to 10 when ice cream and popsicles are involved!
6) Valentines Printable Worksheets Pack – 50 pages of mixed literacy and math activities.
7) Zoo Animals Number Puzzle Strips – Complete these cute puzzles and learn the numbers 1 to 20.
8) Counting Colorful Bugs – This printable book will help kids count to 10 while also learning about color words.
9) Humpty Dumpty Numbers – In this printable game, your students will practice number recognition using 1 dice or simple addition when using 2 dice.
10) Build A Number Santa – Match the number to the correct number word, tally mark and domino to form a Santa Claus
