The past few weeks we have been learning about our community and community helpers. On Thursday, I transformed our classroom into a veterinarian’s office and had each of my students bring in a stuffed animal. When my students walked in, they were greeted with a variety of stations that they would take their pets to throughout the morning.

The first station was a weighing station. At this station, students needed to find out how many cubes their animals weighed.

There also was a measuring station. At this station, students measured how long and how wide their animals were using standard and non-standard units of measurement.

There also was a “check up” station. At this station, students signed their animals in for the day, gave them a treat, and then got to work diagnosing their furry friends.

There also was an x-ray station.

To begin our day, we read the book, “What Pet Should I Get?” and students responded to the book by making either a fish, cat, or dog out of paper plates.

First, they painted their plates and then added details using construction paper.

After recess, we put on our lab coats (I added Dr. ____ and a pet paw to each shirt for my students) and got into groups to head to each station. I set up a rotation chart and each group rotated through 6 stations over the course of the morning. (Rotations were 13 minutes each with a 2 minute clean up time in between each rotation.)

Students at my station worked on decomposing numbers using number bonds and dog treats. They chose their favorite animal card and counted the dots on their ten frame. Then they gathered the correct number of dog treats and practiced decomposing their number.

They worked so hard at this center!

At our “Hunt the Room” center, students were on the hunt for animal cards. At this center students worked on reading and writing their sight words as well as listening for the sounds that they hear in words.

When they found a card, they traced on their recording sheet, “I see a” and then sounded out each animal that they found.

Another center was matching dog bones together. Each dog bone had a letter on it and a corresponding picture on the opposite side of the bone. (I cut them into puzzle pieces.)

At the X-ray station, students loved matching the x-rays to the animal cards.

At the measuring and weighing stations, students carefully practiced counting, 1-1 correspondence, measuring, and writing numbers!

And my students LOVED “doctoring” their animals at the dramatic play center.

At the end of the day, when our animals from our “What Pet Should I Get?” were dry, we created a LARGE pictograph on the floor using the plates and then filled out a bar graph to show which pets we liked best!

My students LOVED our vet day and it was so very easy to set up and run. Without spending a lot of money, my students enjoyed SUCH a fun day and left with HUGE smiles on their faces.