large cardboard box
box cutter
smaller cardboard boxes for shelves, drawers, counters, etc.
play food, play dishes, coffee cups, etc.
The idea for this activity came from Pinterest, although my family put our own coffee-obsessed twist on it. (And yes, Pinterest is the reason I went for a couple of months without posting..I've been too busy getting new ideas for activities!) The idea on Pinterest was for a cardboard grocery store, but we decided to make a pretend coffee shop instead (although it can be used for any sort of store, cafe, etc. and we have also used it as a grocery store). I won't go into detail about how to make the cardboard store--it is explained here: http://www.ikatbag.com/2011/10/greengrocer-etc.html
I brought home a large box from work that was going to be thrown away, and my husband and I cut out windows and made ledges with the windows, as it explains in the instructions. I also used a medium-sized cardboard box and some boxes from Amazon to make "drawers."
To make the store into a coffee shop, I set up a tall box and put the kids' pretend coffee pot (you could also use a teapot) on top of it, along with a pretend container of milk. Every time my husband or I went to Starbucks, we rinsed out and saved our cups and lids and also saved the cardboard rings that go around the coffee cup. We even saved some wooden sticks used as stirrers. I put all of those supplies in one of the cardboard "drawers" I had made, and in the other drawer, we put pretend dishes, silverware, and all of the pretend food we had that were some kind of treat--donuts, cookies, etc. E and W had a lot of fun "filling" the cups, putting on the lids and the cardboard rings, and serving my husband and I coffee. This was definitely a fun activity, and I like that we could re-use a bunch of things we would have recycled instead.
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