Meet the Village: A Guide to the Play Spaces at The Duckling Village

One of the best parts of visiting The Duckling Village is watching kids decide who they’re going to be that day.

A veterinarian? A baker? A mechanic? Maybe they’ll run a flower shop for five minutes, deliver the mail, stop for lunch at the diner and then head home to take care of their babies.

The Duckling Village is an indoor children’s play space in Tyler, Texas built around imaginative, child-led play. Our little village is filled with child-sized storefronts where kids can explore familiar parts of everyday life through play.

If you haven’t visited us yet, come meet the village!

The Cottage

Every village needs a place to call home.

The Cottage gives children a cozy space for some of the most familiar kinds of pretend play: taking care of babies, making meals, tidying up and simply playing house.

It may look like everyday life to us, but to a child, there are endless possibilities. The Cottage often becomes the starting point for much bigger stories that eventually make their way throughout the entire village.

Bloom Boutique Florist

At Bloom Boutique Florist, little florists can arrange bouquets, choose flowers and run their very own flower shop.

Children can create something beautiful for a friend, pretend to take an order or simply spend time arranging and rearranging their perfect bouquet.

It’s a sweet little space for creativity, fine motor skills and plenty of imaginative play.

Cozy Crumb Bakery

There’s always something baking at Cozy Crumb Bakery... at least in our imaginations!

Little bakers can get to work creating pretend treats, filling orders and serving their customers.

For kids who love helping in the kitchen or setting up their own pretend restaurant at home, the bakery tends to feel pretty familiar.

Duckling General Store

Grab a cart. It’s time to shop!

At the Duckling General Store, kids can fill their baskets, shop for groceries, stock the shelves and take turns being the customer or shopkeeper.

There’s a surprising amount happening during a pretend trip to the store. Kids are making choices, communicating, sorting, counting and recreating something they’ve watched their grown-ups do countless times.

Of course, they just think they’re grocery shopping.

Nesting Box Postal Co.

The Nesting Box Postal Co. is part post office, part creative station.

Kids can sort mail, but the heart of this space is our coloring and writing station. They can sit down to color a picture, write a postcard or create a letter for someone else in the village.

Once their mail is ready, they can deliver it to the other storefronts, turning a quiet coloring activity into part of their imaginative play.

It’s a fun way to mix creativity, early writing skills and pretend play, whether they’re drawing a picture for the veterinarian at Pondside Pet Clinic or sending an important letter across the village.

Pondside Pet Clinic

Animal lovers can step into the role of veterinarian or pet groomer at Pondside Pet Clinic.

Kids can care for their animal patients with pretend checkups and treatments, or head to the grooming side to get their furry friends cleaned up and looking their best.

Whether they’re helping a sick pet feel better or giving one a fresh groom, this space encourages nurturing, empathy and imaginative play while letting kids recreate the experience of caring for animals.

Mama Duck’s Diner

What’ll you have?

At Mama Duck’s Diner, kids can cook, serve, take orders and sit down for a pretend meal with their friends.

One minute they’re the chef, the next they’re the server and five minutes later they’ve decided they’re the customer.

Mama Duck’s Diner is also a great example of how social pretend play develops naturally. Kids who have never met before often end up taking orders, serving each other and building a game together without much help from the grown-ups.

Papa Austin’s Auto

If your child loves cars, Papa Austin’s Auto might be where they spend most of their visit.

Our Hot Wheels garage is home to hundreds of cars ready to race, roll and explore. Kids can choose their favorites, build their own tracks and ramps, experiment with different setups and rebuild them again and again.

It’s a hands-on space that encourages creativity, problem solving and plenty of trial and error. There’s no single way to build a track, which means every visit can turn into something completely different.

Aetri’s Workshop

Aetri’s Workshop is our giant Lincoln Log building station, made for kids who love to build, create and start all over again.

With plenty of pieces to work with, children can construct cabins, houses, towers or whatever else they can dream up. They can follow their own ideas, build alongside friends or see just how big they can make their creation.

It’s a hands-on space for creativity, problem solving, spatial thinking and the simple satisfaction of building something entirely their own.

Crawlers Corner

Even our littlest visitors have a place to explore.

Crawlers Corner is exactly what it sounds like: a small, dedicated corner of the village designed specifically for babies who are still crawling and exploring the world from the floor.

Shoes come off in Crawlers Corner, helping us keep the space cleaner and more comfortable for little hands and knees. The toys and activities in this area are also selected with our smallest visitors in mind, with no small pieces or choking hazards.

It gives crawlers a safer place to move, explore and play while their older siblings enjoy the rest of the village.

Babies who are not yet walking are also free with a paid child, making Crawlers Corner especially handy for families visiting with children at different stages.

And Then There’s the Discovery Nest

Unlike our permanent village spaces, the Discovery Nest gives families something new to find throughout the year.

We change the theme regularly with hands-on, educational activities inspired by subjects young children can explore through play.

It gives our regular visitors something different to discover while keeping the experience approachable and fun for little learners.

There’s No Right Way to Play Here

That might be the most important thing to know about The Duckling Village.

We create the environment. The kids decide what happens in it.

A child doesn’t have to use a space exactly as we imagined it. The veterinarian can go grocery shopping. The baker can deliver the mail. Someone may decide that every stuffed animal in the village needs to move into The Cottage immediately.

That freedom is part of what makes imaginative play so much fun.

Children are creating stories, solving problems, communicating, negotiating roles and figuring things out together, often without realizing how much they’re practicing along the way.

Some children bounce from storefront to storefront. Others find one favorite spot and stay there. Some want to play with everyone they meet, while others are happiest creating a world entirely on their own.

It depends entirely on the child and how they play.

Come Explore The Village

The Duckling Village is an indoor imaginative play space for children in Tyler, Texas, welcoming families from throughout East Texas.

Whether your child comes ready to cook, shop, build, care for animals or invent something we never could have planned, the village is theirs to explore.

You never really know what they’re going to come up with.

And we think that’s part of the fun.