Valentine Bakery Dramatic Play
I love Valentine's Day. Not necessarily the over the top-love-is-in-the-air-ultra-commercialized-hype, BUT I do enjoy infusing a little extra red and pink and hearts into my days leading up to it. And, of course, my kids love it too. I mean, they love any holiday that involves candy, so there's that. I created this bakery set to make it easy to add a little Valentine's cheer into your home or classroom too.
As a mom, and teacher, I love easy. I'm spread pretty thin, as we all are, so anything that comes set up and ready to go is what I pick first. That's also what I try to do for you. Put together things that are easy and, most importantly, fun. Now, a warning: this set is not just print and go. There is some cutting involved and supplies to get together, but I'm going to lay out what I did and what I used (all stuff I had around the house).
First, this bakery and hot cocoa stand comes with signs, labels, a banner, and treats galore. Personally, I printed all but the last 2 pages on cardstock and laminated the bakery treats. That way they'll last longer. I just store it all in a gallon sized ziplock bag for next year. It does take a little time to cut out all the treats, but they turn out oh, so, cute! To make the cupcakes stand up I cut a paper towel roll into 1 or 2 in. sections and used double sided tape to stick them to the back of the cupcakes. Obviously regular tape, glue, or hot glue would work too. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!
The hot cocoa stand comes with labels for the hot cocoa stand. I attached them to little cups I had bought at Target ages ago. Anything you have will work. I filled them with pretend topping supplies I had around the house. I used cotton balls for the marshmallows, brown pipe cleaners for the cinnamon sticks, red and silver sparkly pompoms for the peppermints, brown and white pompoms for the chocolate chips, and mini pompoms in an old spice bottle for the sprinkles. I've also used colored paper cut into small squares, or colored tissue paper crumpled into balls to fill a spinkle container.
The bakery comes with Hot Cocoa Recipe cards, so the kids can create the different drinks for their customers.
I printed the order forms and the money on regular printer paper. If you have this set up in a classroom and don't want to worry about running out of order forms, you could laminate them and make them resuable. Just have students write with a dry erase marker and erase them when it's time to clean up!
I know your kiddos will have fun playing with this set. My 9 year old still likes to play with these, and I am all for encouraging imaginative play no matter the age! Thank you for checking out this bakery set, and have a Happy Valentine's Day!
