The kids will love writing letters and delivering them with this fun free printable post office set.
It’s so much fun to get a real letter in your letter box!
My kids got a postcard from a relative the other day and that sparked lots of conversation about letters and how they get from one place to another. We chatted about stamps, and how some letters go by plane, and how our postie drives a car but in some places in the city they ride a bike or walk, and somewhere among all of that I promised to make my kids their own post office!
So while the kids collected things they thought their post office would need, I whipped up a few printables to go with them, and we set up a super fun post office dramatic play area.
How to Set up Post Office Dramatic Play
The first thing a post office needs is a sign. We decorated the printable sign and stuck it up on the wall.
Now the post office needed some mail boxes. It’s easy to make personal mail boxes from the printable, simply print out the mail box page, fold along the grey line and tape each side to make a pocket. Write your name on the front and decorate the mail box and you are ready to receive some mail!
We stuck our mail boxes up under the post office sign so that the post master could collect and sort the mail into the correct boxes, but you could also stick them on bedroom doors and have the post person deliver mail around the house!
You can’t send letters without stamps, so we used the ‘design your own stamps’ page to draw and create our own stamps. Once you have filled the stamps with designs, cut them out ready to be stuck on to your letters with a glue stick.
Next we made a space with a table and some items we collected from around the house for the post office.
We used a toy cash register, filled with our ‘design your own’ printable play money, some pens and pencils for writing letters, a glue stick for the stamps, and some stamps and stamp pad for postmarking the letters. The letters get stamped with animal stamps at this post office!
Setting up a dramatic play post office is a great way to encourage reluctant writers, so you’ll need lots of different things for the kids to write letters on.
Collect up some blank paper for drawings, and some lined paper for writing, as well as some envelopes.
We made lots of copies of our free printable letter writing set which includes paper with dotted thirds lines and an envelope to cut out and fold up.
We also use some free printable postcards which have a space for the kids to draw a picture one one side and write on the other.
Using postcards and envelopes is a great way to learn about addresses, and for kids to practice learning and writing their own address. But letters can be written on anything and they don’t even need an envelope to be sent via out post office!
For beginner writers the list of ‘post office’ related words can be an easy way to get them started and reduce frustrations.
The printable list includes of some of the common words you might need when writing a letter or working in the post office, as well as space to write in your own words. It can be useful to add the names of people your kids want to write letters to in those empty spaces, or any other words that are requested.
Now you are ready to open your post office!
Free Printable Post Office Dramatic Play Set
Our printable post office play set includes a personal letter box to make, a page of stamps to design, a post office sign, and a list of post office words with space to add your own words. All the things you need to quickly and easily set up some post office play at your house, or in your classroom.
You can download the free printable post office play set here.
This printable is an A4 sized pdf file, you will need a pdf reader such as adobe acrobat to open it. If you are printing on US ‘letter sized’ paper be sure to select ‘fit’ or ‘shrink to fit’ from your printer options.
Please remember that the printables at picklebums.com are for personal or classroom use only, you may not sell, share, or link directly to these files.
Do your kids enjoy dramatic play?
If your kids enjoyed this fun post office dramatic play, they might also like these imaginative play ideas:
Forget the kids, I can’t wait to play with this play set myself! This is a great idea, and with so many components to it, it’s going to keep my daughter and I amused for a long time. Thanks Kate!
I have to admit, I’ve loved writing and receiving letters as much as my kids have this week! Have fun!
You are too clever! These are fabulous and I love the set up! My girls love having something set up at their desk space in their room.. sometimes a dr, a vet, an office or a hairdresser…. I know what’s next!!
This is such a fun activity, thank you so much for sharing your printable so we can get busy.
Awww Bless Kate, This is just funtastic! Looking forward to doing this with my little Grandson who turns 3 this month! ‘THANK YOU’ for taking the time to share this, Hun.