To Market, To Market

The book we have chosen to highlight this month is To Market, To Market by Anne Miranda and Janet Stevens. It is a traditional nursery rhyme that has been remade into a comedy of errors. Because her main course keeps escaping, the main character has to make multiple trips to the grocery store. She finally gives up and serves soup for lunch. This book is wonderful for cold winter days and is really fun for young children because it is silly. The market looks like a supermarket that most people shop in.

Here are a number of activities you can use along with the book.

  • Set up a pretend grocery store that the kids can use to play shopping. Use your small tables, vegetables, rice and beans from the grocery store and pretend food. Sort by color, then place the food in baskets. Cut out pictures of each food item and place the pictures in a paper bag. Explain to the children that, just like the book, they have to go shopping to get food for lunch. Give each child a chance to pick a picture out of the paper bag and then go and find the item on the tables. This can be done individually or in groups, depending on your children. As each child brings their food item, you can talk to the children about what it is, the color, the shape, the feel, etc.

  • The second part of the activity will be to prepare a soup from the items the children bought at the store. We can talk children through the process of cutting, chopping, mixing and cooking. This builds on language skills, math concepts, sequencing, etc. (Please be sure to supervise children?s use of kitchen utensils.)

  • Let children practice small motor skills that were necessary in preparing the food for cooking. Make homemade play dough (it tends to be a little softer than store bought) and give the children items like popsicle sticks, rolling pin, cookie cutter, etc that they can use in the playdough.

  • Visit a petting zoo or farm so that the kids can see the animals up close.

  • This book is based on a very old English Nursery Rhyme:
      To Market, To Market,
      To buy a fat pig.
      Home again, Home again,
      Jiggety jig.

      To market, to market,
      To buy a fat hog.
      Home again, Home again,
      Jiggety jog.

    Thank you to Lisa Albert from the EPTSS Division for this month's activity!

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