At a Glance
This printable build a veterinarian craft helps preschool and kindergarten children develop their fine motor control and scissor skills. By coloring, cutting and assembling the pieces, your little learners can practice sequencing while exploring community helper roles, sparking early imaginative play and some empathy for animals.
Do you have a little animal lover at home who is always trying to bandage up their stuffed toys? This build a veterinarian craft is a fantastic way to channel that caring energy into a fun, hands-on activity. With templates for both a male and female vet, your kids can create their very own animal doctor!
The clean lines and bold black outlines make the shapes accessible for little hands to cut out, so they won’t even notice how much scissor practice they are sneaking in.
It would pair great with our build a doctor craft or build a firefighter craft if you’re building out a whole community helpers theme.
Time to get the clinic open and start crafting!
What Skills Can Your Children Learn And Practice?
When making these animal doctors, your children will have the chance to practice and develop some skills such as:
- Cutting Skills – if you feel they’re ready, you can let them have a go at cutting out the pieces all by themselves – they’ll need to be careful and have good scissor control if they want to cut out the pieces neatly
- Fine Motor Skills – when they’re sticking and picking up and moving the parts and placing them where they need to go
- Hand-Eye Coordination – lining each piece up exactly where it needs to go strengthens the brain-hand connection kids rely on for so many everyday tasks.
- Pencil Control – if you print off the black and white version they can practice their pencil control and develop hand strength through coloring.
This simple craft will also give them a chance to practice their concentration and perseverance skills as they may find it tricky to place the pieces exactly where they want them to go.
How To Prepare This Simple Community Helper Craft
First you’re going to want to download the veterinarian templates by clicking the download box at the bottom of the page – I’ve made a color and a black and white version!
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Other materials you’ll need:
- Safety scissors
- Card stock or Craft paper
- Some good glue
- Some coloring pencils or pens
Once you’ve downloaded the templates, you’ll need to print them off onto paper or card.
Then, you can cut them out. Or if you’d like your children to get some cutting practice, you can let them have a go.
Then they can stick all the pieces together to make the vet.
It can be really nice to let your kids have a bit of free rein here and see if they can work it out – kind of like a puzzle.
If they’re struggling, the order I’d do it in is:
- Stick the hair/hat on the head
- Stick the mask on
- Stick the head on to the body
- Stick the arms to the back of the body
- Stick the feet on
(I expect you could have worked that out but I do like to be thorough…)
The finished ones should look something like this- ta daa:
If you want to, you could always laminate the pieces before putting them together and use them as a puzzle. That way, the different parts would be kept nice and they can use them again and again.
After that you’re all done!
Let your kids practice their cutting and sticking skills in a simple and fun way!
But Wait… There’s Also Black And White Vet Craft Templates!
I’ve also made a black and white version which would be an awesome way for your little ones to practice their coloring skills and personalize their community helper in their own way!
So why not crack out the pens, crayons, paints or collage (or all of them if you’re feeling adventurous) and let your kids get creative!
Get Even More Out of This Veterinarian Craft
This one’s more versatile than it looks, here are some fun ways to get even more mileage out of it.
Make It a Puppet
Stick the finished animal doctor onto a popsicle stick, craft stick, or even one from the garden and you’ve got an instant veterinarian puppet!
You’ll have a cute little puppet ready for storytelling, pretend consultations, or a puppet show.
Build the Whole Community
Pair your veterinarian with the rest of our community helpers to create a whole-town scene. Add a construction worker, firefighter, police officer, farmer, teacher, doctor and maybe even a school bus, and you’ve got a whole community for small world play. This can lead nicely on to:
Community Helper Chat
Use the finished craft as a prompt to talk about people who help us in our neighborhoods. Discuss what a veterinarian does, why it is an important job and what other helpers they might see around town.
When I Grow Up…
Once the craft is finished, invite your child to dictate or write a sentence about what they want to be when they grow up. You could then display it next to the craft.
Laminate It and Reuse It
If you want this one to stick around for a while, laminate the pieces before gluing and use sticky putty, velcro dots or a little bit of double-sided tape to assemble. Little ones can then pull it apart and put it back together again and again – you could even mix and match with some of the other simple crafts.
Add Some Texture
If you print the black and white version, ditch the crayons and let the kids decorate the scrubs using torn paper collage, pieces of felt, or even cotton balls for the hair. It adds a wonderful tactile element to the building process.
However your little ones use this build a veterinarian craft, I hope they love it!
Enjoy and let’s nurture those neurons!
