To a toddler most everyday chores can be made into a game, and grocery shopping is one of them.

Shopping with young kids can be split into 3 parts.

Making your shopping list

Get a piece of paper and a pen and walk around the kitchen with your toddler.

Saying, “Do we need some more carrots?” and looking to see. If you do, put them on the list. Soon enough you will have a list to go shopping with.

My advice would be to stick to items in the fridge, freezer, store cupboard and fruit and veg. It’s not a good idea to discuss bleach and where it is kept with your toddler!

At the shops

Ask your toddler if carrots were put on the list, and where they are in the shop. You can ask how many carrots you need, and they can help put them in a bag.

While in the fruit and veg section you can see how many items they recognise or can find.

The same can be done to find ‘their favourite cereal’ or ‘which milk do you drink?’

Putting away the shopping

Once at home with the shopping you can ask where different items go. I was surprised that my son knew better than me where all the different food went.

Of course this is a game best saved for those smaller shopping trips – it could easily take hours if applied to a big shop, as well as your youngster will simply get bored lose interest if the game takes too long.

The shopping game helps with their vocabulary, memory, planning skills, and gets them more involved in shopping and makes it more fun.

You of course can reminise about when shopping didn’t take even half as long to do!

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You can go to town fitting out your baby nursery. It can be a lovely thing to do whilst you are pregnant. Choosing wallpaper, colour schemes, a cot, you name it… or you can beg and borrow from friends and family and search online or in 2nd hand stores. Whatever  you choose, it can be a minefield for 1st time parents. Just what do you need? I bought lots of things thinking I MUST have them, only to never use them at all. Clever marketing made me think I needed them. 

Every family and every baby is different, but this is what we put into our baby nursery

First things first – your baby will need somewhere to sleep.

But where to start – Cots, cribs,  cot-beds, Moses baskets ?

We chose a crib for our room for the baby’s first 6 months. We really didn’t want to get up go to his room for night feeds. Also advice says that the safest place for your baby is in your room by your bed, in a crib or cot. (For the first 6 months anyway.)

We put off buying a cot until he was going to use it. Newborns are expensive enough!!

Mobile
We bought a mobile for above his cot. He loved the music and movement of the animals as it turned around. Newborns are supposed to see black and white shapes the best.

Changing table
The last thing you want to do is bend down on the floor to change your baby – especially if you have just given birth. A good safe changing table with a comfy changing mat proved essential time and time again.
We had a changing table upstairs and down – to make life easier for us!

Drawers for clothes, towels, bedding
It’s amazing how much room his clothes took up. We only had a few vests and baby-grows before he was born. Friends and family all bought him gifts and the chest of drawers in his room soon filled up.

That’s really all we had in his baby nursery. As he has got older, teddies and soft toys have taken over his cot. His drawers of clothes are overflowing – despite numerous trips to the charity shop. The mobile had to go – once he could reach it – it was too much of a temptation for him! Sad for us to remove it though – his baby days were going so fast!

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Baby and child safety in the home useful information