Veterinarian Preschool Pets Theme Dramatic Play Activity

Inside: This preschool pets theme dramatic play activity invites children to be veterinarians, taking care of a variety of pretend pet friends!

Toddlers and preschoolers love to talk about pets, either in their own homes or in the homes of friends and other family members.

One of our spring themes each year involves pets, and the highlight is a veterinarian center!

In this center the children take phone calls, fill out forms, check x-rays, and use tools from our medical kits to help dogs, cats, birds, bunnies … and many more types of pets.

It’s one of our favorite dramatic play activities every year!

Our dramatic play area is one of many centers in our toddler and preschool classroom.

Often I will set this center up to connect with the current theme, such as our ice cream shop (summer theme), flower shop (spring), and post office (community helpers).

I love this area because it invites my young students to use their imaginations while also building communication skills.

With my 2 year olds there is a lot of parallel play until about halfway through the school year, when they will start interacting with each other. It usually starts with them sitting at our small square table together while passing around whatever props/toys that are involved.

Then, they start adding dialogue to their play.

In our 3 year olds class, this area is popular (and crowded) right from the first day of school and continues being a popular area the entire school year.

Veterinarian Preschool Pets Theme Dramatic Play Activity

What Is Needed

Printables:

We used printables from my Veterinarian Packet.

This included:

• Signs
• Labels for Supplies
• Forms
• Lanyard Badges
• X-Ray Photos
• Coloring Sheets

Other items:

• Toy Veterinarian Collection
• Clipboards 
• Pet Carriers
• Light Table for Pet X-Rays
• Assortment of  Stuffed Pets

I also added some pet books:

• Lola Gets a Cat
• Little Kids First Big Book of Pets
• Hello World! Pets
• Biscuit Visits the Doctor
• Caring for Your Pets:  A Book About Veterinarians
• National Geographic Readers: Animal Doctors

The Set Up

I created a veterinarian center that included a check-in area, waiting area, and exam area.

The Check In Area

I added keyboards, a phone, clipboards, a calculator and forms to this area. My preschoolers love office supplies!

The Waiting Area

Yes, I do move furniture around when I change themes! I took the couch from our reading corner and added it to the dramatic play center so that we had a waiting area.

The children loved sitting on this couch holding their pets!

Scrubs

Dramatic play is always more fun when there is something on the dress-up cart!

We had a scrubs and vests from various veterinarian/doctor kits that we collected over the years.

I also attached the veterinarian badges to lanyards for the children to wear while they examined their pets.

The Exam Area

Not only did I move the couch over to this area, but also our light table. I added the pet x-rays and the children had fun guessing what animals they were!

I covered a long table with white paper to mimic an exam table.

Pets were placed on top and checked thoroughly!

Simplifying for Toddlers

There are a lot of pieces to the medical kits, so I removed some of tools during the days our 2 year olds played.

As I’ve discussed many times in my YouTube videos, less is best with younger children and they aren’t as overwhelmed.

Other Areas of the Classroom

You can see everything we’ve done in all areas of our classroom here:

Pets Resource Page