In my hometown we have a special place called, “Children’s Winter Wonderland” that opens right after Thanksgiving and lasts through Christmas. I went there as a little girl and I have taken my own children there. It is a magical place where children see holiday Christmas displays, drink hot chocolate, have their picture taken with Santa, and spend time with their family. This fun magical place inspired this Christmas dramatic play set, so I named it “Children’s Wonderland.”
Since I am not currently in the classroom, I have transformed my basement into this magical holiday place for my daughter Charlie to enjoy, and she literally can not wait. I am thrilled to share with you everything this Christmas dramatic play set has to offer. It is jam-packed, and I don’t expect that it will be used all at once. I just know I appreciate choices and I wanted to give teachers the same opportunity to pick and choose and change things up from year to year.
Christmas Store Dramatic Play
Let’s start with the store in Children’s Wonderland. It is transformed into a candy cane shop called Candy Cane Lane. I used paper straws to sell old-fashioned candy cane sticks. Children can also buy and sell hot cocoa, cookies, reindeer food, and purchase a Christmas Tree at the store. There are a variety of flavors with picture clues for non-readers to say the flavor of candy cane they wish to buy.
Once children purchase food (carrots) for the reindeer, they can head over to the reindeer stall where Rudolph and Dasher are waiting. They have their mouths open and are looking forward to a delicious carrot treat. I printed the reindeer pattern on colored paper and used an Amazon box to attach the reindeer. I cut a hole for the mouth and cut the back of the box out to retrieve the carrots.
If a child decides to purchase a tree, they can take it to an open area workspace and decorate it with the mini ornaments I have left out. I purchased my trees at the Dollar Store (for $1.25) and at Target (for $10). I also got the mini ornaments at the Dollar Store. In addition, I put up the felt tree that I made for Charlie years ago. If you have one of these, you could hang it up too. I purchased a large piece of felt to cut out the tree and used smaller felt to make ornaments.
Photos with Santa are a staple. I put a rocking chair out and purchased a Santa stuffed animal from Amazon for them to pose with. I also provided a small and large Santa cut-out that could be attached to a stick and used as a photo prop instead. I grabbed a few small boxes to use as the pretend camera as well. You could also use your phone and take pictures of them.
Children love to write to Santa and make lists. I have included several differentiated ways to do this. There are cards, postcards, writing paper, and list paper. They come with lines and no lines so students can draw and label too. I have a mailbox station for them to mail their letters to Santa. I also added old leftover cards that they can use.
There are several crafts they can complete from simple to more complex. I have included a light bulb craft, an ornament craft, decorate a Christmas tree craft, and a Santa craft. There are also paper pencil activities where they can color, label, and name a reindeer as well as coloring and decorating a tree.
A holiday word wall was a must! Children can use this to help them while writing in the center area. I know Charlie will use this a ton as she always insists on spelling things the right way.
Finally, I have included several differentiated math games and some addition and subtraction mats. There is also a counting candy canes math mini-book. Students can also make their own candy cane with pipe cleaners. I also gathered a basket of holiday books for children to read and included it in this Christmas dramatic play setup.
I gathered a list of the goodies or similar ones that I used in this Christmas dramatic play set and have them on an Amazon list if you see items that you’d like to purchase for your dramatic play center.
Check out these other dramatic play sets available:
You can also find all these dramatic play sets in my Dramatic Play Bundle:
Read more about my favorite holiday activities here:
