Teaching my Boys Online Grocery Shopping Skills

this post is sponsored by Walmart

This year I’ve given the task of online grocery shopping to my two older boys. Let me show you how it works and what skills they’re learning from this weekly assignment!

 

Online grocery shopping (or grocery shopping in general) is an important life skill

Last week I wrote a post about life skills I’m teaching my boys. One of them was teaching them to do our online grocery shopping!

Grocery shopping itself is a pretty straight forward and simple skill, but we’re taking it a few steps farther with our boys and are teaching them to shop what’s on sale, compare prices, make a menu, use up things in the fridge, and look through the recipes to see what we have and what we need. 

I’m sharing all the details about it today with Walmart+!

 

Why we started using Walmart+ to do our grocery shopping

Since the pandemic started, we’ve definitely taken less trips to the grocery store. For the first few months, we exclusively did Walmart Pickup. But then I discovered that Walmart+ delivers right to your house, and that saves me about an hour of time! Walmart+ is only $98 annually ($12.95 if you pay monthly), and one of their benefits is free delivery from your store on groceries and more as long as the order over $35 (restrictions apply). 

 

How grocery delivery works with Walmart+

Walmart+ works like other delivery memberships, with contracted drivers who pick up the groceries and deliver them to your house. They send you alerts when they’re picking up and dropping off, along with the drivers name, so everything is safe and secure. And you can even choose contactless drop off so they just place it on your porch!

 

Other benefits of a Walmart+ subscription

There are several other benefits of a Walmart+ subscription:

• member prices on gas and fuel
• mobile scan & go when you’re shopping in the store
• free shipping, no order minimum (excludes freight and marketplace items).

You can check out all the benefits of Walmart+ and try their 15-day free trial RIGHT HERE!

 

This is how our weekly grocery shopping ordering goes:

• Philip makes a dinner menu on Sunday afternoon
  • Last year he created a Pinterest account and has boards now filled with good recipes (right here if you’re interested).
  • I cook five to six nights per week, we order in or go out the seventh day (usually Saturday), and have leftovers one other night. 
• As he makes the menu, I go through the fridge and pantry and tell him what we need to use up in our meals this week.
• On Sunday evening we order groceries through Walmart+
  • One of the older boys (they are 10 and 8) and I sit down together in the kitchen and order the groceries.
• We go through the recipes to check ingredients
  • The boys are in charge of reading off each ingredient and determining if we have that ingredient already, or need to purchase it.

Teaching my kids to grocery shop smarter

As we go through our dinner menu and see what items we need to purchase, we open Walmart.com and begin searching in the search bar. I have then type it in (BONUS: it helps with their typing skills!)

We look through the different brands of our needed item and I show them the price per ounces listed on each item and we do a price comparison. I ask them to tell me which is the better deal. Sometimes it’s tricky because the item weights are different, so it’s a good learning opportunity for them to do the math and understand that sometimes a more expensive item is still a better deal. 

As is the case with most stores, Walmart’s generic brand is often less expensive than name brands. When we’re purchasing most items, they choose the off brands because they can see that the price is lower (and they’re trying to stay under our grocery budget).

But there are some food items (like cereal and chips) that I will never buy the generic brand, so as we come to those items it allows for a conversation about why we sometimes buy name brand and sometimes buy off-brands, and why it makes a difference one way or the other.

 

Let’s talk about MONEY

As we add things to the cart, they watch the total price increase. We don’t have a hard fast weekly grocery budget, but we try to always stay under a dollar amount of $100 per week, so it’s fun for them to work through the list and try to keep the order total in check. 

If you do this with your kids, tell them what your budget is and let it be a game for them. Sometimes we have to add and subtract things to keep it under the dollar amount.

 

YOUR questions about teaching kids to grocery shop online

How long does grocery ordering take?

It takes us about 15-20 minutes. It’s not a huge time commitment at all! Way better than going to the store and wandering around for 45 minutes and still having to drive back home and unload everything.

 

What age do you start?

My middle son is 8, and he’s just at the right age to start. My youngest is almost 5 and he’s still too young. I’d recommend that they able to do some math and be able to type.

 

How did you encourage them to want to do this?

I just decided it was time for them to learn this skill, and told them it was now their assignment. If it was an assignment that was really hard and took a very large amount of time, I’m sure I would have gotten push back on it. But since it was a simple and fairly quick task, they were willing to jump right in.

If your kids are hesitant or flat out refuse, start with putting them in charge of it for one month, and then they can evaluate from there. When they discover that it’s not hard or super time consuming, I think the pushback will decrease.

 

How do you stop them from buying something crazy??

I’m doing this with them. I sit right by them and we’re doing it together. I’m not just handing them the laptop and saying “tell me when it’s done.” So I can see everything that’s going in the cart.

 

The most important thing my kids are learning from this:

Ordering the groceries helps them understand how much things cost.

As kids, things just show up in your closet or your fridge or pantry, and it’s easy for them to expect it and not realize that these things cost lots of actual dollars. We’ll be ordering a cut of meat sometimes and their eyes get huge as they see the price tag of $15 for one item and suddenly their cart total shoots up.

Without even teaching them, they are automatically looking for the items that are on rollback or are the off-brand that costs a few dollars less. It’s really fun and rewarding to see them grasping the concept!

 

The next steps in this life skill learning process

As they get older, I’ll take them to the actual grocery store and have them learn how to navigate the store most efficiently, select the best cuts of meat or best produce, and pay at the register. But we’re in the beginning phases for now and Walmart+ is the perfect way to help them learn these life skills. 

If you want to try it too, check out Walmart+’s free 15-day trial right here!

 

 

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