This is an easy print-and-go set on shopping life skills for students working on putting away groceries. It is a fun activity that teaches children to identify items that go to the fridge, those that go to the freezer, and those that go into the pantry. This is one of the first and easiest shopping life skills activities you can teach your child.
This article features a free printable pdf (down below) with colorful real images of 36 food pieces and three options (categories) of where you can put them:
- 12 in the pantry,
- 12 in the freezer,
- and 12 in the refrigerator.
Who can use a sorting activity for putting away groceries?
This sorting activity can be used by children in preschool who are working on sorting categories. This is a fun activity and a great exercise to test their understanding of classes and practice more classification activities.
This sorting activity can also be used by children with learning disabilities like autism or down syndrome who are working on developing life skills
In other words, this food sorting activity for putting away groceries can be used for children from age two up to teenagers.
You can find more classification activities both for beginners and advanced students here.
How to use the food sorting activity?
The process is similar to other classification activities. To introduce this sorting activity follow these steps:
- Print and laminate the activity file (at the bottom of this page), then cut the different images and task cards
- Use a velcro
- to attach the images to the activity card when the child answers.
- and use another velcro on the back of each activity card for organization and to make it easy to start and put away the activity.
- Ask the child to “sort the objects that go to the freezer together, than those that go to the refrigerator together, than those that go to pantry or cabinet together “.
- Wait for the child to answer then reinforce of correct eventually.
What’s included in this food sorting activity?
This activity is designed to be the first step into learning to sort groceries. here the child learns to classify items according to where they belong in the kitchen. The exercise includes 36 real images of items we find in the refrigerator, freezer, and pantry:
- The first set of flashcards is for the items that go into the refrigerator and includes the following items:
- broccoli
- pepper
- kiwi
- cheese
- milk
- yogurt
- ketchup
- eggs
- cheese
- juice
- cake
- soda
- The second set of cards is for the items that go into the freezer and includes the following items:
- cone ice cream
- frozen peas
- frozen french fries
- ice cream
- frozen meat
- frozen fish
- ice cream
- popsicle
- frozen chicken
- frozen green beans
- frozen shrimp
- ice cubes
- The third set of cards is for the items that go into the pantry or cabinet and includes the following items:
- bread
- canned tuna
- cone flakes
- honey
- oil
- chips
- tea
- cookies
- pasta
- flour
- powdered milk
- candy
Download the printable file:
If you have any learning tools you or your children need; we would love to hear about them in the comment section or on the contact page.