During this month of December, we have a Toy Store in our dramatic play area. Each month, I have been posting a different dramatic play center from our classroom, and so far, I’ve shared our Pizza Shop, Grocery Store, and Vet Office.
Find all of my Dramatic Play centers here. I chose a Toy Store for December since during Christmas time, children are thinking of what toys they want for Christmas and probably visiting the toy store often as well.
This is the front of our Toy Shop. I kept the same red and white paper awning that I made for the Pizza Shop last month, and added this “TOYS” banner. I made a Toy Shop sign and a Store Hours sign. The shelves of the “market” have a variety of toys displayed.
To print the Toy Shop sign, store hours sign, and TOYS banner, click here: Toy Shop Printable Set.
For the “toys” in our Toy Shop, I used mostly empty boxes: a blocks box, puzzle box, Play-Doh set box, Lego set boxes, sidewalk chalk box, and magnifiers box. I also have a package of Play-Doh (we will use the play dough later in class) and some stuffed animals. Many of these came from dollar stores. The reason I chose to use empty boxes is because if we had actual toys in this center, it would be a distraction. The children would most likely be focused on playing with the toys, rather than interacting with the Toy Shop and gift wrap area. If you decide to do this center after Christmas, you could have parents save plenty of empty toy boxes from Christmas gifts.
This is our Open/Closed sign.
Here’s our Wrapping Station.
One basket has wrapping paper pieces. You can use scraps of wrapping paper leftover from gift wrapping. Be sure to ask parents to save their scraps as well. You could also buy $1 rolls of gift wrap from dollar stores. The other basket has gift bags. These can be recycled from gifts that children give you at Christmas time.
Our Wrapping station also has a basket of scissors and some sticker gift tags. These gift tags were freebies from the mail (I think charities sometimes send these). We also have colored masking tape (not pictured).
Our cash register is ready for a toy shop worker to check out customers.
These are so fun! I am lucky enough to have these Toys ‘R’ Us employee vests for our pretend play store. I know someone who used to work at Toys ‘R’ Us, who was nice enough to donate these to our class.
We also have an elf apron for employees who work at the Wrapping Station. I bought this elf apron at the after Christmas clearance sale last year (I’m pretty sure it is from Hobby Lobby).
I also added toy catalogs for children to look through to make their wish lists or shopping lists.
We also use these printables in our Toy Shop: we have Christmas cards that children can write on and decorate, shopping lists, checks, and play money that children can design. Most of these printables can be found on my Pretend Play Writing Printables post. The Christmas Cards can be found on the Writing Center Printables post. The shopping list with the people and animals pictured (really cute) is from the Holiday Wrapping Station Dramatic Play pack, which is made by Pre-K Pages.
What would you add to your Dramatic Play Toy Shop? Do you have a different dramatic play center you set up during Christmas time?
Where it came from:
The market shelf with awning is the “Village Store” from Community Playthings.
I used several items from the Holiday Wrapping Station Dramatic Play packet sold at Pre-K Pages:
- Open/Closed sign
- Wrapping station signs
- Shopping list
- Station signs
- Toy “menu” (visible in the first picture)
Disclosure: I was not paid or compensated in any way to promote any of the products listed on this page. The links are provided simply to be helpful.
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