Thematic Thursday: Cocoa Cafe' Thematic Center

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For today's Thematic Thursday we wanted to share a thematic learning center with you and include several suggestions for skills to develop through this activity.  If you have set up a thematic center in your home or classroom we'd love to share it in a future post.  Send us your pictures, a link, and a list of skills your center supports.

Welcome to the Cocoa Cafe'

Thanks to Kelly from Doing Life Together for sharing this with us. 

You will want to check out Kelly's post for information about where she found this idea, the materials she use to set up her center, and  more pictures. 

Social Skills
~Working Together
~Listening: Taking orders
~Manners: please, thank you, pardon me, etc.

Math Skills
~Counting: count out cups, marshmallows, straws, etc.
~Money: identifying coins, counting coins, taking money, making change
Obviously, these skills will depend on children's ages and ability levels
~Comparison Skills: Talk about more and less
~Sequencing: Offer different size cups and have children organize the cups by size

Language Arts Skills
~Writing: Write a menu for the cafe'
~Creative Writing: Come up with clever drink mixes and names
~Come up with a name for the Cocoa Cafe'
~Make advertising signs for the shop
~Write receipts for the cocoa customers
~Follow up the play time with a journal or creative story using the Cocoa Cafe' as the setting

Social Studies Skills
~Ecomonics: Introduce the assembly line process to children. 
Give each child a different job for putting together a complete cup of cocoa.  Talk about how many cups of cocoa a can be put together in the same amount of time with group assembly versus individual assembly.
~Talk about supply and demand.  Discuss how pricing may impact sales in the Cocoa Cafe'

If you set up your own Cocoa Cafe' learning center we'd love to see pictures.  In fact, send us your pictures and we would be happy to put together a post showing them all off!  If you think of other great skills to practice using this play center we would love to see your ideas in the comments.  Enjoy!

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