Vet Themed Dramatic Role Play

Dramatic role-play or “jeu de rôle” is a great way to encourage your kids speaking in French in a dedicated play space by using themed content vocabulary in a playful manner.

A “jeu de rôle” is a technique or activity whereby our French little learners get to impersonate a character (real or imaginary) in an imaginative environment set up for play purposes.

Imaginative “jeu de rôle” plays an important part of early childhood development as it helps develop their oral language skills, early reading skills, early writing skills, cooperation and social skills in a dedicated dramatic play space in French!

In this blog post, I would like to share the Vet clinic play space that I set up for my son.

We recently minded a friend’s dog and of-what-a-lovely time my son had! They were inseparable. My son put his heart and soul to care for that dog; so much that he gave the dog his food and that dog became ill… to the point that we had to take the dog to the vet clinic as a precautionary measure. However, due to the current health restrictions, I could not bring my son with me to the vet clinic, He was so sad. Then I thought to myself, why not bring the Vet clinic to us, and use this opportunity to learn new French vocabulary and learn how a Vet operates a clinic to help heal his fur patients?

To achieve this, I decided to create a range of Vet themed printables and use them to set up an inviting Vet clinic for my son to play in at home!

We have limited space at home and I didn’t want to buy more pieces of furniture so I tried to re-use what we already had at home:

For the reception area, I simply placed 2 chairs next to each other’s and used the posters, signs and labels to decorate and create an inviting space.

I placed my son’s animal plush toys on the chairs in the reception area, and they became the fur patients. I also borrowed a travel animal crate from a neighbour along with some real animal accessories to give the space a real vet vibe. I encourage you to ask around you if you could borrow some accessories before investing in too many.

For the Vet clinic, I used our cube shelving to set up the vet-related tools, accessories, forms, etc. I placed pet medicine labels on recycled bottles and placed a towel on top of my son’s craft table to create the exam room. I used labels, signs, bunting and forms to give the space a Vet clinic vibe. You could also add some cotton buds, cotton balls, cotton pads in clear plastic containers.

I used our DYI light table to create a radiography space. I didn’t like the look of the X-Ray photos when printed out on real paper and used on the light table, so I recycled some real X-Rays to use on our light table. You might have kept some pregnancy X-Rays or injury X-Rays which would look fabulous and so real for your little learners to use on the light table. My son loved looking at these on the light table.

You could also add some information books or any craft activity about pet, pet care or vet in your play space to decorate it further. You might even like to encourage your pre-schoolers to help create additional items for your vet practice depending on their age!

The whole play space looked so cute and inviting. My son was immersed straight away into space, and engaged in purposeful imaginary role play in French!

There is a lot included in my play pack. Depending on how you want to set up your vet clinic, you may want to use all of the printables provided or you may select just a few. You might even like to encourage your pre-schoolers to help create additional items for your vet practice depending on their age!

As your kids play and imagine in a dedicated French-inspired environment, they will be building fantastic content-specific vocabulary in French!

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