Pretend play activities are some of our favorite ways to be creative at our house. I grew up loving to play architect and house designer and my kids LOVE to pretend that they own either a toy store or a candy store!
Since we are hosting LEGO WEEK this week we decided to grab our favorite LEGO bricks and create our own toy store filled with them! We used both LEGO and LEGO DUPLO bricks for our creations and my kids worked for over an hour creating their store and then playing in it.
Here's how we set up our toy store filled with LEGO bricks...
To start off I set up a little station for making money and price tags. The station included scissors, strips of paper, and markers. The kids had so much fun making money and coming up with what to write on their price tags. My 3-year-old daughter just scribbled pictures on her tags while my 6-year-old son wrote huge numbers. Both had a lot of fun.
I was surprised how long the kids took to set up their store. They really got into making tags and sticking prices on things and cutting out money. It was so cool to watch how they chatted about what they were doing while they worked.
After they got the papers ready, they sat down in our building area and started creating with their LEGO bricks. My son used the smaller LEGO bricks while my daughter just used the LEGO DUPLO bricks.
As the kids built each creation they took it over to our shelves and found the perfect spot for it and then labeled it with a price, using painter's tape.
Once all of the toys were set up on the shelves and labeled it was time to open the toy store!!!
We grabbed some shopping bags and cash registers (we have a princess register and another one from Learning Resources) and the kids began playing. I joined in too!
The kids took turns shopping and running the register. I loved watching them work together. My 6-year-old used totally funny voices when he played store keeper and had us all giggling.
We even let my almost 2-year-old in on the fun. He liked pulling down all of the price tags and stealing the cash register. He also took a turn or two as the store keeper and gave people change while he sat at the register.
This activity was such a fun and simple way for the kids to enjoy time together. I had fun playing a little bit and just goofing around with them.
I loved that this activity let us...
- work on building and creating with LEGO bricks
- practice writing numbers and letters (my son made the LEGO store sign himself)
- work on conversational skills and turn taking skills
- pretend and have fun all together!
My favorite two pictures from the whole toy store experience was the kids fighting over our Learning Resources cash register, It really is cool... and we might need to buy a second one. Too funny!
If you love pretend play activities, make sure to check out our Pretend Play Ideas Pinterest board filled with ideas.
Don't forget to head over to our LEGO Week series page to check out all of the other great posts using LEGO bricks that we'll be sharing from our blogging friends this week.
You can also follow us on our Toddler Approved Facebook page and Instagram account to see the other activities with LEGO bricks that we are creating!
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