Kids love to play pretend. If you’ve ever been to a kids’ museum, you’ve probably seen areas where kids can play veterinarian, pretend to shop for groceries, change tires on a mini car, and so on. One of our clients had a similar idea: what if they offered kids a play farmers market stall?

Our client, Missouri Grown, is a branch of the Missouri Department of Agriculture that promotes local foods. Naturally, they have a presence at lots of farmers markets.

Missouri Grown wanted to engage kids and encourage them to see the farmers market as a fun place to be. And if the kids learned a little bit while they were playing, so much the better. So they asked us to create a kid-size “stall” with artificial produce like what you might find at a real farmers market.

Two baskets hold a variety of produce. Kids can pick out what they want from the baskets and then weigh it on the produce scale. A nearby iPad will display sample prices, so the kids can practice calculating how much they’d be charged for their haul.

Meanwhile, a series of panels on the front of the play farmers market quizzes kids (or their parents!) about what’s a fruit and what’s a vegetable. That way, they can learn about their food while having fun.

With a fun farmers-market-themed play station, Missouri Grown doesn’t just get to raise awareness of local foods with today’s consumers. Now, they can encourage the next generation of consumers to consider buying local and supporting small farmers. And it helps get kids thinking about where their food comes from and what role agriculture plays in their lives.