Grocery Cart Math

Common Sense Press

Many home schooling parents use grocery shopping trips for practical math lessons. This book saves time and energy by mapping out “grocery store lessons” for us with reproducible work sheets. 

We need to take a few minutes to look over lessons before we go to the store and talk about any new ideas that might need to be covered. However, most lessons simply apply much of what has been introduced already in math texts.

For example, one lesson asks students to list fruits and vegetables in the produce section that are sold by the pound. They also record the price per pound. When they get home, they figure out which costs the least per pound and write them in order from least to most expensive.

Another lesson has students reading hot dog labels for grams of fat per serving then graphing their answers. Yet another lesson has them record prices for hamburger fixings then compare to restaurant prices.

There are 32 lessons altogether with a range of difficulty from approximately third grade level up through fifth or sixth grade. I don’t recommend dawdling at the grocery store if you have toddlers or babies in tow, but as long as you only bring along older children, this is a great way to transform grocery shopping into practical learning experiences.