Vet Office: A Pretend Play Prompt

We explored the work that happens at a vet office using real x-rays on a light panel for our latest pretend play prompt. The kids loved this invitation to imagine as they came up with creative diagnoses and treatments for their animals!

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For this invitation to pretend, I set out various stuffed animals, baskets for pet carriers, Learning Resource's doctor kit, our Leapfrog laptop for taking notes, animal x-rays by Constructive Playthings, and our small light box.  Dr. E's first patient was D's pet turtle. I did not put out real band aids because I learned my lesson on that one!

The turtle had fallen out of a tree as turtles often do. I thought the photo above was her entering in the symptoms he described but when I looked closer I realized that he is typing himself!

She studied the x-ray of the turtle on the light box (which was particularly cool as it contained turtle eggs that you could see) and decided that the treatment involved removing his shell. You can see how the turtle feels about his prognosis. 

Next E was the pet owner and I was the vet with D as my assistant. E noted that he wasn't very helpful but he was very interested in the pieces of our doctor kit!

E's rabbit had a stomach ache. She reported that she was pretty sure she had "eaten too much pollen." We had to pump her stomach.

We also had to thoroughly check and clean her ears. That pollen sticks to everything!

The light box and x-rays added an irresistibly realistic element to our imaginative play scenario. D liked trying to switch the light on and off. E thoroughly studied the insides of the animals. You could even see what the snake had eaten for its most recent meal!

You certainly don't need a light box to benefit from the learning opportunities that these x-ray cards offer. You can see here how they look without a light source behind them. They also come with photo cards so E had fun guessing what several animals were before matching the x-rays with their respective photographs.

The photo cards also look amazing with the x-rays laid on top of them! You can discover where the bones are arranged in the animals' bodies while seeing the parts that don't show up on the x-ray as well like eyes and feathers.

This is our Nature & Animals post for the Light & Reflections Series.

Read our past Light & Reflections posts:

  

My co-hosts' Light & Reflection activities about Nature & Animals:

Animal Prints Mirror Sensory Play by And Next Comes L

Ladybug Suncatcher by Happily Ever Mom

Light Table Nature Mosaics with Loose Parts by Where Imagination Grows