(Pretend Play) Homemade Menu

The kiddos love playing restaurant in their pretend kitchen when their cousins come over, which led to the inspiration of this homemade menu for pretend play.

When the two cousins are here it's not unusual to find all four kiddos pretending to run and own a restaurant. So one day when I knew Big Cousin was coming, I set up the materials for she and Big Brother to create their own pretend play menu.


Materials:
white card stock
old cooking magazines
glue sticks
kid scissors
permanent marker
laminating film/laminator (optional, but makes the menu nicer)

I have several copies of old cooking magazines which I've been hanging on to for various reasons. I knew that this project they would work well for the kids to use in creating menus for their restaurant.

Rather than make several menus, I decided the kids could make one menu set with several meals. Before they started working on it I used permanent marker to label the white card stock with different meals and made a cover page with the word "Menu."

I explained to both Big Brother and Bog Cousin what they'd be making, and then let them start cutting. They cut out food items they wanted to have in "their restaurant" and glued them onto the page they thought fit best.

Some of the food items were a little harder to find, like breakfast items, while dinner was easier to find menu items for. It was great to hear their conversations about where they thought things fit best. 

Together they worked and filled both the fronts and backs of the pages. 

After they were done creating the menu pages, I ran each page through our small laminator so they would last a little longer and feel more like real menus. 

I had planned to combine the pages into one set using binder rings, but the kids have really enjoyed keeping the pages separate. That way they can bring out a menu depending on whichever meal they are pretending to serve. 

And although Little Brother didn't help make them this time, he loves bringing them to a customer and having them point out what they would like to pretend to eat. 

An easy, fast, and frugal homemade pretend play item which is bringing lots of hours of entertainment in our house. 

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