Shopping Centers (or malls as we call them in North America) provide a great way for customers to walk from one store to another without the hassles of having to leave one store in order to go into another. Through the years, Shopping centers  have added on movie theatres, arcades, and food eateries. This has led to a variety of ways of teaching children and adults with disabilities a number of skills.

Money Management.

Increasing money skills can be used in almost all areas of a shopping mall. Opportunities include stores such as banking, clothing , restaurants, etc. examples of items to teach include:

• Will identify coins
• Will identify money
• Will count change
• Will create a budget
• will fill out deposit slip
• Will fill out a withdrawal slip
• Will use an ATM

Sensory

A shopping center provides a low-cost and effective way of arousing more of  more of the five senses (hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch). Yankee Candle offers candles with a variety of fragrances including apple pumpkin, apple spice, beachwood, black cherry, etc.  Bath and Body Works also provides samples for both olfactory (smell) and touch. Samples of fragrances include lotions, cream, massage oils and fragrance mist. Window shopping is an additional opportunity to enhance visual cues with teaching a number of basic skills.  Other places include day spas, massage chairs and nail salons. Examples of sensory teaching activities include:

Window Shopping (Visual)

• Will describe the color of the outfits
• Will identify which items cost the most
• Will describe how many of the outfits are the same, different
• Will describe the various shapes (circle, square, triangle, rectangular)
• Will count the number of items in the window

Olfactory (Smell)

• Will identify a good smell
• Will identify a bad smell
• Will identify the smell (i.e. smells like apples)

Tactile (Touch)

• Will identify the object
• Will tolerate hand massage
• Will touch the object
• Will describe the shape of the object

***  Be mindful some children and adults may have sensory processing issues and can be oversensitive to sights, textures, flavors and smells.

Social Skills

Teaching social skills involves communication, decision-making, self-management and relationship building. Locations in a shopping center to develop these skills includes, eatery and restaurants, banks, department stores and movie theatres. Samples of teaching social skills includes:

• Will greet the store associate
• Will say thank you
• When promoted, will ask for help
• Will wait patiently
• Will make eye contact
• Will use appropriately voice tone

Teaching Prompts

A few guidelines in teaching new skills:

• Teach a new skill at least 2-3 times. The shopping center allows multiple opportunities to work on a number of skills including money management, and social skills.
• Allow the person to think for themselves use prompt levels to help navigate levels of independence: Independent, verbal, gestural and physical.
• Allow for real choice-making. Choice is more realistic when it involves at least 3 items or more. Choosing a new outfit or an item from a menu are perfect examples.
• Always remember to praise!