She’s sitting on the ledge like a frozen statue watching the sea otters. “Ready to go see the fish?” I ask trying to balance her interest with her brother who has been hopping back and forth impatiently for the past five minutes. She looks up at me with a serene smile and nods.

This probably sounds like one of those calm girl – active boy gender stereotypical moments that people tell me about so often, but those are rare in our home. My kids are both super active, but if I had to label one of my twins as “the active one” I’d pick her in a heartbeat.

There are only two things she sits still for, ever; a good book and animals.

She sleeps in a mound of them, she pretends to be them, she talks about them, she reads about them. She loves animals.

It wasn’t until last year, however, that she started talking about animals in terms of a career. She still has time to ultimately decide if she wants to be a veterinarian or an astronaut or a dancer or a gymnast or Wonder Woman or any of the millions of other ideas bopping around in her head.

I’m not concerned with her deciding now.

However, she started talking more about vets and what do they do so we decided to investigate it a little this summer. These are our explorations into the world of veterinarians.

affiliate links are included below

Awesome Vet Unit Ideas

Field Trip Ideas

Adventures bring a topic alive. I believe wholeheartedly that you can’t truly learn about something unless you touch it, smell it, ask questions about it. That’s what learning through adventure is all about and it’s where we almost always start with a new topic.

For any field trip I always,

• Bring a notebook and pen for each kid.
• Encourage them to ask questions from the experts.
• Write down their questions and what they seem most interested in during our visit
• Bring a camera

1. Aquarium

Vet’s take care of all kinds of animals. My twins went through a huge ocean animal interest so we spent a lot of time at the local aquarium and visited others on our travels.

At any aquarium you can obviously observe the animals that make your kid want to be a vet in the first place. Aquariums often have opportunities to watch trainers talk about and interact with the animals.

This amazing aquarium in Boston even had a place for kids to pretend they were vets and work with turtles in their Turtle Hospital play area.

2. Zoo

The zoo is a great place to observe animals for kids and if you’re really lucky they will get the chance to observe a zookeeper at work. The zoo in St Louis even had a pretend vet clinic for the kids to play in.

You May Also Like:
Zookeeper Training – Project Based Unit

3. Vet Clinic

Do you have a Vet Clinic in your neighborhood? This is a great walking field trip if you do.

Call or pop in on your own beforehand to see if they are okay having your kids come and ask some questions. If they are, ask what time of day or day of the week would be best and set a time frame to best respect their busy schedule.

Then, before you go, have your kids discuss some questions that they have about vets or animals. Write these down so if they stall in the moment you are prepared.

Vet Unit Learning Activities

These learning activities take place before and after field trips. Learning through play and adventure go so naturally go together. Play brings up questions. Field trips answer questions and always bring up more questions. Play explores these questions, answers some, brings up more.

Here are some fun learning ideas for a vet unit.

Literacy Activities

• We read a TON of books about animals and vets. Two of our favorites were; Sally Goes to the Vet (fiction) and Day in the Life of a Veterinarian (nonfiction).
• Compared and contrasted fictional and non-fiction accounts of vet visits in picture books.
• More good Children’s Books about Vets
• These Alphabet Animal Notebook printables are great for working on handwriting or using for journaling pages.
• Building pet words and pet research from this printable pack.

STEM Activities

• Animal research. We observed specific animals at the zoo. We brought notebooks along to draw and write in on our visits and then used these combined with children’s books to gather information about favorites.
• Later we drew pictures of our favorite animals and added details about their habitat.

Pretend Play: Vet Clinic

I love pretend play for working on a range of skills including writing, reading, vocabulary development, and cognitive understanding.

We set up a Vet Clinic in our play area. I was inspired by these Vet Play ideas:

• Vet Hospital from Pocket of Preschool
• Eye Doctor Pretend Dog Play from Sunny Day Family
• Vet Clinic Busy Bag from Lalymom
• Pretend Play Vet Clinic Dramatic Play area from Mother Natured
• Vet Clinic with Printable from Teaching Mama

Our Vet Clinic included:

• Vet Clinic Printables (from the lovely ladies above)
• Clipboards
• Pens (attached to the clipboards with string and washi tape)
• Vet Costumes – these come with a variety of vet instruments as well.
• Animal Carriers and more animal care props

read all: project approach themes for preschool and up

Current Learning Objectives

I see learning in pretty much everything we do so it seems limiting to document what objectives we work on in a given unit, but since it is required by our state, here are some of the Common Core objectives for First Grade met with this unit.

• Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding. (reading)
• Explain major differences between books that tell stories and books that give
  information, drawing on a wide reading of a range of text types. (reading)
• With prompting and support read information text appropriately complex for
  grade one (shared reading)
• Identify basis similarities in and differences between two texts on the same topic (shared reading)
• Participate in shared research and writing projects (writing)
• With guidance and support from adults, recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question (writing)
• Compare and contrast physical characteristics in animals (science)
• Identify, in animals, the relationship between the physical structures and the
  functions of those structures (science)
• Identify, describe, and compare the physical structures of animals (science)
• Describe how physical traits help a species to survive (science)

Where We’re Going Next

I don’t think this is a unit we are done with for good, but interests seem to come and go in phases with my kids. Right now they are obsessed with Scaredy Squirrel and soccer, but I think this the vet interest will be back.

Want More Simple Play at Home Ideas?

• Velcro Four in a Row DIY Game from Teach Me Mommy
• Halloween Roasted Vegetables from The Gingerbread House

Complete A-Z Ideas for Play at Home

Subscribe Below for Weekly Project Ideas