Preschool Activity: Playing Veterinarian

Gresham LOVES dogs – real dogs, stuffed dogs, books about dogs…  He is planning to have a dog themed birthday party when he turns 5 in October!  This week, we played “Vet Office” with our stuffed dogs.

Owen had fun looking at books in our “waiting room!”  We used a tray table and folding chair for a check-in station.  I added a clipboard and pencil for writing down the dogs’ names and what they were visiting the vet for.

For vet supplies, we used the two remaining items from our Fisher-Price doctor kit (the blood pressure thing was recalled because of lead, and the rest of the toys broke!) plus some cotton balls, a real medicine syringe, and two real arm splints left over from Owen’s EGD test.  Gresham didn’t want anything else, but Aidan used to play this as a preschooler, and he liked to use real band-aids, craft sticks for tongue depressors, baby wipes, and a little trash can for throwing away band-aid wrappers and wipes.  It’s fun to have some real supplies to use, especially when one is not accustomed to having access to the band-aids and baby wipes!

Gresham had lots of fun examining our real dog, Tucker, and he was surprisingly cooperative!  He’s such a good dog – the perfect temperament for a family of loud boys.

Tucker was just groomed on Monday, and came home wearing a freebie leash from the vet’s office.  This made a great leash for our stuffed dogs!

Pretend play is so much fun!