Today I’m sharing photos of my Vet Dramatic Play Center. I like to keep my “House” Dramatic Play area all the time because all children are most familiar with a house. I think it’s beneficial to have it available all the time for building language and social skills. So the Vet center is an extra area, but it’s a small area. Find all of my Dramatic Play centers here.
In the past, I haven’t really had a good place to put an additional dramatic play center, so I had to make do with whatever I had available. Most of the time, I actually used our toy ironing board as a shelf for it. The ironing board worked for our grocery store, garden shop, doctor, vet, whatever. It seems silly, but you can make do with whatever you have. This past summer, I was able to use school money to order a really nice “market” for my extra dramatic play center. Now I can share decent photos with you of my dramatic play centers without the embarrassing ironing board. 🙂 The market is from Community Playthings. (This is not an ad, they are not paying me anything to mention the company, but I know people will ask.)
This picture shows the whole vet dramatic play center. That’s a dog X-ray on the side shelf.
This picture shows the other side of the vet center with vet posters on the back of a shelf. (The art center is on the other side.)
We have a clipboard with sign in sheet, and a $1.00 calendar planner for writing appointments. More on the bird cage later.
On the right side, there’s a basket of prescription forms that children can write on.
A patient information form that children can write on. All of the forms: the prescription form, sign-in sheet, and patient info came from a Pre-K Pages dramatic play pack. The shot label below did as well.
Basket with real syringes (without the needle, of course). These can be donated by parents who work in the health care field, or bought from Amazon.
Dog bowls and dog collar from a dollar store. The toy bone came with a children’s play set, but you could also get the rawhide bones from the dollar store.
This basket has empty medicine boxes and bottles for pets.
A basket of stethoscopes.
Our pets are stuffed animals. I have a fish, two dogs, a cat, and a bird (not pictured here). We have a toy pet carrier. As soon as I have an empty pretzel jar, I can use it as a fish bowl for the fish.
This is a pet cage I made with two $1.00 baskets from Dollar General. I used two zip ties to attach the baskets together. Children can easily open and close it to put pets inside. This actually works out better than the store bought pet carrier above because the cage door on the store bought one is difficult for the kids to open and close. I got this idea from the site, Growing in Pre-K.
This bird cage came from Michaels (on sale or use a coupon). The bird and the fish above are mini Webkinz that I found last spring at the Dollar Tree. At the time, I had no idea why I was buying them, but they are perfect for our Vet center.
These are our dress up clothes that stay in the House Center all the time. This is the best way I’ve ever found to organize dress up clothes (because kids never hang them). We have a vet costume as well as a doctor and nurse costume that children can use while they’re playing at the Vet center. These costumes came from Lakeshore.
I didn’t get a picture, but we used our reading center as a waiting room. It basically looked the same as always, but we had books about pets and a waiting room sign there.
I think we’ll have to have “Scooby Snacks” one day for a special snack! 🙂
What else would you add to a Vet Dramatic Play Center? Share your ideas in the comments below.
None of the links here are affiliate links and I did not get paid by anyone to link to these shops. The links are provided simply to be helpful.