Pretend Play: Smoothie Cafe + Free Printable Smoothie Recipes
My daughter has a play kitchen and pretend food that she is always playing with. One of her favorite pretend food activities is making smoothies in her little blender. The blender makes noises when she pushes the buttons and whips the fruit and veggies around. She loves it! Now that she is preschool-aged (3), I wanted to make her free printable smoothie recipes for her own pretend Smoothie Cafe.
Smoothie Cafe Setup
To make the recipe posters more durable, I laminated them (such a great investment! We use ours all the time for artwork and different awards the kids have received).
I also made a free printable sign that reads, “The Smoothie Stop.” My daughter’s toy kitchen has a window on it so I taped the sign on the backside of the play kitchen underneath the window. I placed the 3 laminated posters above the window for her customers to see.
She takes the order on the other side using the stove/sink as a smoothie-making area. Her blender fits in the sink. Also in that area are straws which I made for her by cutting our colored straws in half and sprinkles. The sprinkles are just for fun and not listed on the ingredients lists. I figured that she can put them on as a surprise. I used an old sprinkle container with waterbeads inside.
Inside the cabinets are the cups and plates. The plates are for bread and cookies. In the small refrigerator are the 3 different kinds of juice, milk, and ice (white pom poms in a container).
On a table next to the kitchen, I placed all her ingredients, snacks, cutting board, utensils, and play money. Since some of our fruit was missing or items we didn’t have, I used pom poms to represent them: pineapple, cherries, blueberries, oranges, and mangoes. There’s also an empty, clean yogurt container.
She wore her apron, which was purchased from Dollar Tree, then pretended to go to work (too cute!).
Since she can’t read, I made them with clipart (via clkr.com). Eventually she will know all the smoothie names based upon the color and the ingredients.
Here is a list of the different ingredients you will find in these recipes:
orange juice apple juice fruit punch |
ice milk |
coconut milk (for Island Dream) |
yogurt frozen yogurt |
banana apple pear |
strawberries blueberries cherries |
watermelon pineapple avocado |
mango orange carrot |
Here are the fun Smoothie Names you’ll find on the recipe printables:
- Island Delight
- Bananaberry
- Cherry Vanilla Bliss
- Apple-Pear Power
- Fruity Tooty
- Tropical Smoothie
- Pineapple Banana Dream
- Orange Delight
- Avocado Banana Chiller
- Sweet Sunrise
- Pink Paradise
- Orange Dream
(See all our smoothie recipes here)
Skills Practiced:
- Matching ingredients
- cutting fruit and bread
- using a spoon to scoop – hand/eye coordination
- following instructions
- learning about money – math for older kids
- manners/customer service – by having them says things like, “Have a nice Day!” or “Thank you, please come again!”
Print your copy here → Free Pretend Play Recipes
*By downloading/printing the PDF you are agreeing to the Terms of Use: These printables are copyright to this blog, Artsymomma.com and are free for personal use only. Commercial use, modifying it’s contents, hosting on another website, reproducing/redistributing is strictly prohibited. When mentioning the free smoothie recipe printables, please refer them by linking to this post – do not link directly to the PDF. Thank you!
This post is also part of a collaborative series with 4 other crafty bloggers. Twice a month we will be sharing ideas for the same preschool theme. This week’s creative learning theme is FOOD.
We would love for you to check out their amazing posts!
- I Heart Crafty Things – Preschool Fruit and Vegetable Sorting Activity
- A Little Pinch of Perfect – Learning ABout the 5 Food Groups + Printable
- Pink Stripey Socks – Candy Mosaic Art
- Handmade Kids Art – My 1st Cookbook + Free Template
Up next is Christmas Preschool Activities (12/5).
This is such a cool activity! Love it. 🙂 (and the recipes look really yummy too!)