Burger Shop Dramatic Play

Following my little ones’ love for pretend play, I’ve kept adding themes to our collection of dramatic play printables. In today’s post I’m going to show you how I set up a fun burger shop dramatic play scene for them using our burger shop dramatic play printables.

Setting up a Burger Shop dramatic play scene

If you’ve seen our previous pretend play setups, you’d know we like to use our ikea play kitchen as a base for our play scene. I simply turn it around, decorate the front and the kids use it as a shop counter. If you don’t have a play kitchen, a small desk, table or short piece of furniture would work too, so just use what you already have in your home.

To make the burger shop come to life I designed themed signs and a price list to display around the pretend play space. Our very well-loved cash register toy was a great addition to this space and makes the burger shop look more realistic, while encouraging kids to experiment with basic maths concepts, learn about customer service and take turns being a customer vs the cashier.

Encouraging learning through play

When designing our dramatic play kits, I always include a customer order form. They print 2 per page and I laminate ours so the kids can wipe and reuse them over and over. These encourage simple writing / mark making and communication during pretend play, mimicking the real world and helping children improve their social skills.

Burger Shop dramatic play food

Another important part of our dramatic play kits are the props children can use to extend their play. I designed all the burger fillings, the sides of fries and even sauce bottle labels to extend their play. After printing the printables on paper, I mounted the play food onto pieces of cardboard to make them sturdier and fun to hold.

The kids can then have the experience of actually building the burger with the ingredients in the customer form after they take an order, which is quite fun!

I found some cute colourful plastic baskets I had bough for a party and added them to the play space, for the kids to put the burgers in and deliver the orders.

I also added themed sauce bottles. To make them, I wrapped the labels (included with the printable kit) around empty plastic juice bottles.

This burger shop was another well loved dramatic play theme at our house!

I hope this post inspired you to create a new play experience for your little ones.

If you’d like to set up a play space like this one, you can grab our Burger Shop Dramatic Play Printables that include all the signs, labels and forms shown in the photos. Or check our Dramatic Play section for other imaginative play printables!