If you asked my friends and family to tell you something that I’m OBSESSED with, they would 120% tell you that I loooove donuts. So I decided to set up a donut shop in my house ready for some donut dramatic play! Let’s just say that my toddler wasn’t the only one that LOVED this play space!
My toddler and I have always enjoyed our donut dates. From the moment she started eating solids, we would head to the shops together and have a warm cinnamon donut for morning tea. As she’s gotten older, we’ve continued the tradition and often head to the donut shop together. So I just knew she’d jump at the opportunity to help decorate some cardboard donuts for our new donut shop!

I started by collecting materials from our play stash. I set up a table with our Ikea cash register, a table cloth, some felt donuts (and our decorated donuts), some tongs and brown paper bags.
Next I hung all of the signs and labels from my Donut Shop Dramatic Play Set. This packet also includes both British and American spellings of the word doughnut/donut and flavour/flavor. I laminated the signs and labels that I wanted to use for next time and hung our bunting sign. I just love how it all turned out!

Drinks were also served at our Donut Shop. We set up our wooden coffee machine with some coffee cups and our drink sign! Our machine is from Aldi but you can get one very similar by Le Toy Van over on the Creative Toy Shop*.

The customer order forms are perfect for encouraging early writing with your Little Learners. My daughter has just turned three and she loved mark making on her customer order form!
I also made some customer loyalty cards and job cards! The little job cards fit perfectly inside the plastic badges you can buy from most dollar stores.


As you can see, this was such a popular dramatic play area! You couldn’t wipe the smile off Lilly’s face even if you tried!
“The shopkeeper loved decorating all the customer’s orders, got to grips with simple mark making on the order form, used numbers when dealing with money…not to mention all the imaginative play benefits!”
If you’d like to set up your very own Donut Shop Dramatic Play area, you can grab a copy of my Donut Shop printable set over in my store. It’s only $6.00 AUD and I just know your Little Learners will love playing in their very own donut shop!
