In my classroom, we’ve had a Doctor Dramatic Play Center for the month of March. Look for more of my Dramatic Play centers here — I’ve been sharing one each month this year. At the bottom of this post, I will share where I got each item.
In this photo, you can see the shelf where all of our Doctor Dramatic Play things are displayed for the children to use. We have a Doctor’s Office sign on the top of the awning and to the right is an Office Hours sign and Emergency sign.
There are penlights in a basket on the top shelf. The children use these to look in their patients’ ears, nose, and throat. (We did talk about not putting these in anyone’s mouth, just using them to look.) The penlights are great because they turn on by pressing and holding a button and turn off when you let go. I didn’t have to worry about them being left on and running batteries down.
These empty shot syringes are a huge hit! The kids love to pretend to give each other or the baby dolls a shot. (Of course, there is no needle.)
Children use these bandages to wrap around the arms and legs of their patients. The kids are actually pretty good at rolling them up. I picked these up at a dollar store.
This basket on our bottom shelf contains an empty medicine bottle and a child size arm sling.
Our middle shelf has these Doctor’s Office forms for the children to fill out. This adds literacy skills to our center. On the left we have prescription sheets and on the right patient info sheets where they can check off their patient’s problem.
The other basket on the bottom shelf has real working stethoscopes that children can use to hear each other’s heartbeats. This adds science to our center.
This is our Open/Closed sign that children can flip over.
In the back, there’s a First Aid medical bag and a skeleton poster and eye chart. The medical bag was made with a small red tote bag I bought at Hobby Lobby with a card stock printout attached to the bag with strong tape. This holds up surprisingly well — this picture was taken after children had played with it several days.
We have a nurse scrub shirt and doctor coat in our dress up area with our other dress up clothes. I use these plastic drawers to store all of our dress up clothes. (We actually have 12 drawers, this picture only shows some of them.)
Our center also has plenty of baby dolls to use as patients and several baby blankets to lay them on.
We have colored masking tape in our Art Center all year which works great for baby doll bandaids. You could also use regular masking tape (the uncolored kind).
Then we used our Reading Center for the Waiting Room (there’s a Waiting Room sign posted on the wall by the window.)
The children in my class mostly used the baby dolls for their “patients”, but I did let them pretend to doctor each other. They were well supervised and we didn’t have anything invasive. I chose not to include things like tongue depressors or cotton swabs (Q-tips) because I didn’t want anyone to poke them in another child’s ears or throat.
Where it Came From:
I used several printable items from the Doctor Dramatic Play Pack which is sold at Vanessa’s site, Pre-K Pages.
- doctor’s office sign
- office hours sign
- emergency 911 sign
- waiting room sign
- office forms
- open/closed sign
- eye chart
The nurse scrub shirt and doctor’s coat came from Lakeshore Learning.
The market shelf with awning is the “Village Store” from Community Playthings. This shelf is the toddler size shelf, so the shelf is not tall. We use it just to display our store items, the kids don’t actually stand there the whole time. It works well for our class.
Disclosure: I was not paid or compensated in any way to promote any of the above products listed on this page. The links are provided simply to be helpful. Amazon affiliate links are provided below.
From Amazon.com (these are the exact same items I ordered):
- Diagnostic Penlights
- Shot Syringe 60cc (Pack of 10)
or 10cc Syringe (Pack of 5)
- Arm Sling Kids Pediatric Small
(item pictured might be different from what you receive, mine was blue)
- Stethoscope
- Assorted Colored Craft Tape, 10 Rolls
You may be able to ask parents who work in the medical field if they are able to get some of the medical supplies from work.