Preschool Computational Thinking

Grocery Store

Summary

Children will be introduced to food groups (fruits and vegetables) learning about the similarities and differences between the food groups. After reading Eating the Alphabet: Fruits & Vegetables from A to Z or another book about food groups, invite children to sort food items available in class and label the groups they create. Discuss how sorting involves abstraction, which focuses on some details and ignoring others. As they sort, invite children to practice counting and comparing quantities.

Activity Steps

Explain and define abstraction.

Abstraction involves ignoring irrelevant details and focusing only on key information.

To introduce food groups, ask children what food groups (fruits and vegetables) they may be familiar with and what sets fruits and vegetables apart, scaffolding as needed.

For example, fruits have seeds, while vegetables do not. Fruits grow above the ground, while some vegetables do not.

Read Eating the Alphabet: Fruits & Vegetables from A to Z by Lois Ehlert or another book about food groups. During or after you read, ask children to describe what they notice about the food groups, pointing out similarities and differences as needed.

What do you notice about these fruits and vegetables? How are they the same/similar? How are they different?

Engage children in a food sorting challenge to help set up their pretend grocery store. Show the set of unorganized fruits and vegetables to sort and baskets to place the group of sorted objects. Invite children to share the ways they can sort the objects (e.g., by type of food by color, by size), scaffolding as needed.

Let’s think together about how to sort all of this food for our pretend grocery store! Sorting into groups can make it easier to find the food we want. When we sort, we focus on specific details and ignore others. What are some ways we can sort the food items into groups?

Guide children into sorting food items into fruits and vegetables and prompt about the similarities and differences between them, scaffolding as needed.

Notice what foods are the same or similar, and what foods are different. How do you know fruits are different from vegetables?

Have children take turns sorting the food items into the appropriate basket until all the food is sorted. After sorting is complete, review the groups and invite children to count the objects in each group and compare quantities of the groups:

How many things are in each group?
Which group has [more/less] food items?

To introduce labeling (which relies on abstraction), ask children how they will remember/know the sorted food items in each group. Share how labels can help because they show only the important details making it easier to identify the food items in each group.

Now that we sorted our food into two groups, we can label the groups to help make it easier to identify which basket has fruits and which basket has vegetables.

Create two labels writing Fruits or Vegetables for each pair of children. Pass out the labels to each pair and have them draw the foods associated with that group (i.e., one pair draws fruits, while the other pair draws vegetables).

Once children finish drawing their labels, review them together.

Now we know where to go if we need a fruit and where to go if we need a vegetable. Where should I go to find a ____?

In this activity, children will engage in:

Computational Thinking

Organize and label objects by identifying important information while ignoring irrelevant details or details that are not necessary to the goal of the activity

Mathematics

Count objects (one to one correspondence)
The last number counted represents how many (cardinality)
Understand quantity and the name associated with a given quantity
Compare quantities (more/less)

Science

Observe, describe, and sort food into groups (fruits and vegetables)

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