Play dough cafe

We all had a productive and fun few hours making and playing play dough cafe this morning. We made pink, yellow and blue play dough and made bakery products first - cakes, biscuits, swirly pastries and lollies. I moved the play kitchen into the real kitchen so Harry and Peter could 'cook' their creations. We only generally do play dough in the kitchen as then I don't get stressed about the floor and it is easily cleaned up. I also moved our little table from the playroom so the products could be displayed and sold from there.

We used a variety of toys and animals to visit the bakery and buy things. We used real money in 1p, 2p and 5p denominations so Harry could practice some mental maths and this is also the start of learning about money for him. He did well - he recognised the different coins and correctly gave change when needed. We took turns at buying and selling so he had to find the right combination of coins too when buying. 

We counted up the bakery till when all the goods had been sold and talked about the concept of profit. He correctly said that the baker would have to buy ingredients to make his products out of his takings, which would reduce profit and we talked about the less tangible costs such as power, light and rent.

After we had played bakery, Harry made lots of pizzas to sell and we repeated the game with these. This has been a really fun game and an involved learning experience at the same time.