Price Points

One game Fiona likes to play is "Grocery Store." She has a toy shopping cart which she likes to fill up with toy food, clothes, books, and any of the various plastic doodads that a preschooler accumulates over the years (grocery stores in her world apparently sell just about everything). She fills the cart up in the living room and then pushes it back to the office to go to the checkout line.

One of our local stores has recently added self-scanning, which is pretty much the only line we use any more. So Fiona has seen us scanning items to put in the bag and has even tried doing it herself once or twice (we draw the line at letting her scan the eggs). Each time an item scans, a generic soothing female voice announces the price: "two dollars ninety-nine cents."

As Fiona "scanned" her toy groceries this morning, she announced the price for each one. "3 dollars, 99 cents"; "8 dollars, 99 cents"; "10 dollars, 99 cents". Each item cost a certain number of dollars... and 99 cents.

Seems like she's already figured out how prices get set in the real world.