12 Ways to Incorporate Shopkins into Your Homeschool

I don’t know about your house, but Shopkins™ are a huge hit at ours. Every single birthday, every single holiday, all my littles and middles ask for are Shopkins. I’m certainly not going to complain about this. They’re inexpensive, they don’t take batteries, and they actually require an imagination to play with them.

Watching their delight as they play with these little collectibles sparked a question in me:

Can I find a way to incorporate them into our homeschool routine?

As it turns out, the answer was a big, fat, yes, and they’re a much more valuable tool than I ever thought they’d be! Not only are they a great tool for my younger children, but I came up with several ways to use them with my upper elementary and middle school age kids, too. 

Interested? I thought you might be!

12 Ways to Use Shopkins in Your Homeschool

1. Counting

I know. It’s pretty obvious, but first things first, right?

2. Ordinal numbers

I think lining up these cute little guys is much more fun than learning number order on a worksheet, don’t you?

3. Cardinality of Sets

Finding the cardinality of sets can seem pretty abstract to a child just looking at some objects between braces ({}) in a textbook. Young children learn so much better when they can actually see how things work in real life, and not just on a piece of paper.

4. Sorting

There are so many ways to sort these- colors, fruits/vegetables, housewares, clothing, electronics,… It’s entirely up to you and your kiddos!

5. Adding/Subtracting

But of course.

6. Multiplying/Dividing

This may require quite a few Shopkins, but they’re cheap enough that you can acquire a good number in no time at all.

7. Reading

Yes, reading. Since these come with collector’s guides, it’s a great motivation for kids to learn to read so that they can learn all the characters’ individual names- and what adorable names they are! As you read through this with them, simply run your finger under each name as you say it, and they’ll learn quite a few new words in a jiffy!

8. Spelling

Give your kids a fun spelling activity by asking them to create their own Shopkins books. They can either draw or print out coloring pages of any number of characters and write their names underneath each one.

9. Vocabulary

No kidding, my 5 year old learned the meaning of the word “duplicate” by watching a YouTube video on these. Not only that, there are so many Shopkins characters that may introduce your children to new words, such as “macaroon,” “wedge” (as in the shoe), “beret,” and “moccasin”- just to name a few.

10. Fractions/Ratios/Proportions

I’m serious! You could easily make up problems like, “How many Shopkins out of the 10 in this group are in the ‘sweets’ category?” This helped my kids to understand these concepts so much better than circling 3 out of 4 dogs on a worksheet.

11. Symmetry

This will require some duplicate Shopkins, but you’re more likely than not to get more than a few of those as you’re building your collection.

12. Art Inspiration

My kids love to sculpt their own line of characters called “Cutekins” out of either Sculpey Clay or, if we’re out of clay, homemade bakeable clay. Let your kids come up with their own ways to be inspired!

Keep in mind that these ideas can be used with any number of little toys. I just happened to use the Shopkins idea because they’re all the rage in my house right now. Do you have any additional activities to add?