This month, I have a Grocery Store set up in our Dramatic Play area. We are doing a Farm Theme this month, and a Grocery Store goes well with that theme because we can talk about how our food goes from farm to grocery store. Last month, I posted our Vet Office. Find more of my Dramatic Play centers here.
This is the front of our Grocery Store which shows our “Market” banner and our “Market Hours” sign.
This is the back of our Store and shows our cash register, shopping baskets (green), and our “Sale” sign.
On this shelf, I have food with price labels: mini juice and milk jugs and bread. We only have a few food items on our shelf, but there are more elsewhere in the dramatic play area.
On this shelf, we have price labels: apples, bananas, carrots. The baskets on the bottom have our reusable grocery bags and purses and wallets.
Our purses came from the Dollar Tree.
Our reusable grocery bags came from the Dollar Tree. I like these bags because they are smaller than “real” reusable grocery bags.
These shopping baskets also came from the Dollar Tree.
I added rolls of receipt paper. The children cut the paper with scissors and write items and prices on the receipts. I bought this paper in a pack of 3 rolls at Staples for just a little over $1.
Our cash register is stuffed with play money and receipts. The kids love this cash register. I think this must be a vintage toy because I haven’t seen them anywhere else, but there are plenty of companies that sell all kinds of cash registers. The play money was printed from online. I just googled “play money”. I had also added some real pennies, but they disappeared. 🙂
I cut coupons out of the newspaper inserts and laminated them. These make great environmental print.
I printed these name tags and put them inside the clear name tag necklaces (from Lakeshore) for store employees to wear.
Our “credit cards” are used gift cards and fake credit cards from junk mail.
These are checks the children can write on to pay for their groceries. You can print these play checks here.
We have shopping lists for children to write their list of items they will buy at the grocery store. With the checks and shopping list children are practicing writing skills while they think they are just playing! You can print the shopping lists here.
We have more grocery items for children to purchase in our refrigerator section.
This Open/Closed sign is a highly prized part of our Grocery Store. The children love to turn the sign and close their store when center time is over.
I know all of you have more ideas of things you add to your Grocery Store Dramatic Play centers! Please share your ideas in the comments below!
Where it came from
The market shelf with awning is the “Village Store” from Community Playthings.
I used several items from the Grocery Store Dramatic Play packet sold at Pre-K Pages:
- Market banner
- Market hours sign
- Sale sign
- Employee name tag cards
- Price/food signs
- Food signs (on refrigerator)
- Open/Closed sign
Disclosure: I was not paid or compensated in any way to promote any products listed on this page. I shared where I purchased each item only to be useful to others.
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