You all know that I love a good toy and mourn the loss when a great language toy is retired (like the old Fisher Price pirate ship or Robin Hood’s tree house.)
Well you can imagine my joy in finding the return of the Fisher Price cash register on my Saturday jaunt to Toys R Us this morning! This is a great toy—I know some would say it is old fashioned and doesn’t look like the real thing, all automated and computerized but the truth of the matter is that kids love the play money and can’t resist putting it into the slots and banging open the cash drawer. The cash register is a must for anyone playing store. How else can you keep your money organized??
Children learn best through experience and here is a real life example of sorting coins and learning numbers while exercising imaginations. Younger children will use this toy in investigative play, pressing different keys with varied results. Older children, two and a half and above will use this toy in pretend play, checking friends out of their store. An added feature is that there are no distracting noises or batteries involved.
Recently, I was playing store with a 5 year-old. He had shelves of pretend food, a chalk board to write out the prices, and a wallet full of pretend bills and coins. We could have used a cash register.
