Children love playing shop: it’s why so many toy tills still get sold. My five year-old still regularly sets up a cuddly toys or toy cars store in his bedroom, and insist we all line up to make purchases.

How about taking that idea to iPad? It’s been done before: Toca Boca’s Toca Store back in the day, and the inventive Little Zebra Shopper more recently, which got children to fold together real (well, pretend real) products from paper, then scan their barcodes using the device.

Now developer Pixle, which made the marvellous Foldify app, is trying something along the same lines as the latter. It’s a new app called Storest, and we reckon it’s well worth spending some (real, not pretend real) money on for your children.

“Storest is a fun iPad app that teaches kids about money and shopping through a hands-on approach, with the option of playing in both virtual and printable modes,” explains its App Store listing.

“Encourage group play by printing out products with scannable bar codes, along with foldable shelves to hold the goods - just like in a real shop! Fill your basket, scan the bar codes using your iPad front camera, and count up the change while completing your purchase.”

The printing is handled from within the app: if you have a compatible ‘AirPrint’ printer, you can print out products including bakery, fish, fruit, meat, toys, vegetables and confectionary, as well as virtual money. If you don’t have the right printer, you can email the files to yourself to print out from your computer.

Once printed, the app works like a till on one half of the screen, tapping in prices, and as a barcode scanner on the other side, to bleep products through, using the iPad’s front-facing camera.

It’s creative, and kids will love the printable element. Storest costs £1.99 for iPad from Apple’s App Store.

Storest from Pixle on Vimeo.