As I mentioned in a post last week, I am looking at a theme of ‘People who help us’ with the Children this month. When I have worked on themes like this, the children have both really enjoyed it and I find it helps me to think of a range of different activities to keep them both entertained. I thought I would share the recent vet activities for pre-shoolers that we have been doing.

The pregnancy tiredness seems to be (finally!) lifting so I am keen to embrace the children’s’ enthusiasm whilst I have the energy to do so.

Last weekend our youngest cat, Finlay, was due to have his annual booster and check up at the vets. I thought this was the perfect opportunity to introduce the idea of the vet to Mr D. So, before we headed off on Saturday I explained to the children why we take the cats to the vet, and the things that he would check over and explained that Finlay would have a vaccination too.

We headed off to the vet, just Mr D and I and he was very excited to see the large scales (for dogs) and even more excited when we got called into the room and saw that the room looked almost exactly as a picture I had shown him earlier. The vet was great and explained the things he was checking and the vaccination etc. Mr D was enthralled by it all and was keen to tell Damian and Miss E all about it.

When we got home we coloured in some pictures of a vet visit and drew pictures of Finlay at the vet. It’s the first time Mr D has shown any interest in Drawing a picture and I was quite pleased with his picture of Finlay. Miss E also joined in with drawing a picture of the cat, very enthusiastically. She kept saying ‘tail’ as she scribbled around the picture, It has pride of place on her notice board.

He then directed my drawing of a picture, reminding me of the details to draw in. Obviously my picture isn’t drawn to scale. Finlay is a normal sized domestic cat, not a lion.

After we had finished drawing and colouring the children headed upstairs to get their Doctors set and started to role play the vets; an activity that both the children have continued doing each day since. They made use of a toy shopping basket to bring their animals downstairs onto the operating cushion where they both checked the heart of the animals, gave a vaccination and asked if they were OK. It was very cute to watch them play this.

He has also talked through a book we picked up from the library about doctors and how vets look after animals and Doctors look after us. There is a section about the maternity ward and Mr D will tell me that ‘mummy lifts up her jumper and the people take a picture of the tiny baby inside mummy’s tummy. Then when the baby is ready to come mummy lifts up her jumper and then we can all cuddle the tiny baby.’ If only it was that easy! It’s very sweet though that he is linking the things he is seeing in his books with events in his life.

Continuing the theme my parents staged an accident at their home and sent a whatsapp video to the children. The video featured ‘dog’ who had fallen down the stairs and needed attention. We headed there a couple of days later (during which time Snowman has also taken a tumble down the stairs!) with the vet kit.

I had popped to Home Bargains and picked up some plasters, cotton wool and bandages to add into the kit for them which they both loved.

Mr D and Miss E went to see dog and snowman in their make shift beds in the spare room at my parents. They then carried them downstairs carefully to administer vaccinations, check their hearts and to apply some plasters and bandages. It was very sweet seeing them look after the teddies.

The children have really enjoyed this little area of work, and have been really engaged in drawing and colouring in pictures about the vets.

We are going to do some more work on ‘people that help us’ later this week but tomorrow and Tuesday I am going to look at arctic animals with them – making the most of the snow today whilst it is fresh in their minds.

I’ve got a Pinterest board here with some ideas for people who help us.

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