My daughter loves to play dress up and any sort of dramatic play activity. She’s especially fond of cooking and kitchen dramatic play activities lately. This spaghetti shop for kids pretend play activity has seriously been one of her favorites and she spent a long time (an hour and 20 minutes!) playing and exploring with the spaghetti!
Dramatic Play: Spaghetti Shop for Kids
Post contains affiliate links for your convenience. See my disclosure for more info.
For this spaghetti shop for kids pretend play prompt I set up the following:
- Play Dishes
- Mini Tongs
- Small pan
- Strainer
- Apron
- Plain cooked noodles
- Colored noodles (see below for how to color noodles)
I set everything out and let my daughter decided how she wanted to set up her play area. She checked everything out at first and then ran to get her “best friend Lambie” so she could “make dinner.” Lambie even got a special booster seat so he could reach his food.
RELATED: Photographer Dramatic Play activity for kids
My daughter was in heaven with this activity. We’ve made spaghetti together numerous times but it was fun to watch her “make” it herself. She thought the red noodles (aka the “Sgetti sauce”) were so cool and was very engrossed with making her spaghetti.
Those tongs and slippery spaghetti noodles definitely got the fine motor skills working too! in addition too imaginative play she was doing with this activity, one of the coolest things to my daughter was that she got to use real kitchen tools. The pan, strainer, tongs, and whisk are all utensils that we cook with so that made it extra special to her! 
RELATED: Camping pretend play prompt with free printables!
Sure it ended up a bit messy and she tried a few bites (she decided that spaghetti is better when it’s hot) but watching her play and the conversations she had with Lambie while cooking and eating her “dinner” were priceless!
How to Color Pasta:
- Cook & drain pasta
- Rinse with cold water in a strainer
- Place pasta into a plastic bag (for multiple colors separate into multiple bags)
- Add red food coloring to bag*
- Mix well & leave to sit for a few minutes (mine sat about 5)
- Rinse excess color off in a strainer
*I realize not everyone is comfortable using food coloring but there are natural alternatives or you can omit this portion of the activity if you don’t feel comfortable using food coloring.
The kids had such a great time with this pretend play activity! I love to bring it out on rainy days because it will keep my kids engaged and busy for a long time. They get so creative and I love how they work together to share the spaghetti.
Give this simple activity a try today!
Looking for more crafts and activities? Check out our index for 100+ plus kids activities! Find activities by theme, materials, skills, age and much more!
This looks like a lot of fun!
Thank you for stopping by the Thoughtful Spot Weekly Blog Hop this week. We hope to see you drop by our neck of the woods next week!
Looks like a real challenge for a little girl like yours 🙂 Nice idea!
Since we’ve switched to paleo, we have some spaghetti that won’t be used simply taking up space in the pantry. This looks like a fantastic use for it 🙂
Yes! Great way to use that left over spaghetti up! Thanks for stopping by!
Oh my little girl would love this! She is constantly making pretend food, I am definitly coping this one 🙂
New follower 🙂
Yay! Hope she has fun! 🙂
When I first glanced at the picture, I thought it was yarn. Now I see it is real noodles. I still think I am going to go with the yarn for a center, but thanks for the inspiration.
cute! but I will use red and white yarn for my busy preschoolers. I will also use it as a display for our Italian Day when the other classes visit our room.
A really fun dramatic play idea that I haven’t seen before. Thanks!