Flower Shop Dramatic Play
Why Use a Dramatic Play Flower Shop?
A dramatic play flower shop is the perfect spring time activity to engage children in meaningful play. I love to change out my dramatic play center at least once per month, and this play center can be used any time during spring and summer.
The flower shop is an opportunity to engage children in language, cooperative play, writing and math skills, as well as having a blast!
If you know me, you know I love dramatic play in all seasons and themes, so if springtime is not what you’re interested in right now, check out my ice cream shop dramatic play center, outer space and rocket ship dramatic play, fire station dramatic play, hospital play center, or Chinese restaurant.
What Supplies Do I Add to the Flower Shop?
It’s so easy and fun to make dramatic play activities exciting for the kids.
I got almost all my materials for the Flower Shop from the Dollar Tree store. You also probably have many of the supplies and materials you want already in your home and garage.
You can add:
- Garden Supplies
- Gloves
- Trowels, Shovels, Watering Cans
- Seed Packets
- Seed and Plant Pots
- “Dirt” (I like to pretend its dirt using brown fabric or brown pom poms)
- Vases
- Fake Flowers of various colors.
- Bouquet Paper (or any wrapping paper) but I found flower bouquet paper at the Dollar Tree and the kids thought it was magnificent!
- Cards and Writing Utensils
- Order Forms (included in my printables)
- A Pretend Cash Register or Pretend Money
- Pretend Phone
- Baskets
- Cups for “planting”
- Styrofoam for sticking flowers inside.
How Do I Help My Kids Learn in the Flower Shop?
Pretend play and role play is a meaningful learning activity even as an adult, so you can only imagine that kids can make meaningful learning through these playful dramatic play activities as well! The dramatic play flower shop is no exception to this wonderful rule of learning.
First, I’d recommend letting your kids in on your plan to create a flower shop play center and letting them get excited with you! Take them shopping to pick out flowers and supplies. Show them the signs and order forms as your printing and laminating them. Let them help you get things set up and decide where to place and organize things! Perhaps, they can paint some flower pictures as decorations for the flower shop as well.
Next, show kids the role cards and different role possibilities they may want to explore while playing. You playing with them a few times can be super helpful for them to see a good model of language and cooperative play. Kids will learn from your example. This modeling will also be extremely helpful as kids see how you use the literacy materials. Show them how you fill out the order forms and write a card to go with the bouquet!
Last, invite friends, cousins, siblings and neighbors to come over and play in the flower shop with your little ones so they can learn leadership, cooperation, turn-taking, and new language vocabulary.
Can the Flower Shop Help my Child Learn Chinese?
I LOVE using dramatic play to teach my students and kids Chinese! I honestly wish I had incorporated it into my Chinese immersion classroom even in fourth grade!! Kids love to have a real reason to speak the language and engage with each other. I use this with 3-6 year olds, but as I mentioned I believe even older kids would benefit from dramatic play and role play opportunities as well!
Firstly, even kids who cannot read the Chinese langauge yet benefit from being exposed to the language and to the print. (This goes for English and other native languages as well! One of the basic important opportunities for young learners is to be exposed to environmental print in the world around them!). If you don’t live in a country where Chinese is the spoken language, this may be one of only a few opportunities your child has to see meaningful Chinese print.
If you know Chinese: perfect! Point out words and phrases that are useful and model those when you’re engaging in play with your child. If you don’t speak Chinese, you can look up a few helpful words and phrases and practice them together! What a perfect motivator and reason for you and your child to practice Chinese together! I promise your little one will love being silly and playing with you even if you only have a few Chinese phrases to say for now.
Flower Shop Dramatic Play Printable Downloads
The printables for the dramatic play flower shop are available in English, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese, so please check carefully that you’ve chosen the file that will best suit your needs!
