My son Yanthy’s favorite activity these past weeks has been playing store. He pretends that he has a business and that his business is selling toys. He builds his toy store using different items in the house, and I helped him make play money that we can use in our transactions. Yesterday, we made price tags for his products and a signage for his store, including an OPEN and CLOSE sign. He enjoys playing either with me or with our maids, and because we take turns on being store owner and customer, he asked that we make a store signage for our own stores also.

Playing store seems to be a very simple activity for my son but I realized that it teaches him a lot of lessons through play, as follows:  

1. It helps plant the seeds of entrepreneurship in his young mind. I had been teaching him about entrepreneurship since he was around two years old by exposing him to the things that I do. He would help me distribute leaflets in our neighborhood for our various business endeavors. He would watch me as I work on making posters for our business and he would accompany me in putting them up. Playing store is just another way of teaching him lessons on business the fun way.

2. It enables him to develop his fine motor skills as he carefully arranges his toy products as part of his display. He is able to practice writing letters and numbers by making price tags and signages.

3. He becomes more familiar with the different denominations of paper bills as we use paper money in our pretend play. He learns the concept of using money to pay for purchases or in exchange of products. He learns addition and subtraction as we compute how much to pay for the toy products sold in his store and how much would be the change if the money given is bigger than the price of the toy.

4. He learns customer service lessons as we teach him how he should interact with his customers like greeting them as they approach his store and saying “thank you” after they make a purchase. We teach him not only the words he should use as he greets his customer but also the manner by which he should greet them. We tell him that the tone of his voice should be pleasant and that he should smile and look at his customers when greeting them. We tell him not to force his customers to buy but to ask his customers what they are looking for or what they need. By teaching him this, he learns an important principle in customer service – meeting the needs of the customer. Your customer will go to you because you have what they need or what they are looking for.