Doctor Party

Recently we celebrated my favorite doctor’s birthday… my husband who is a pathologist. We served some of his best-loved foods and I made some fun themed printables that is free to download below. Hoping these ideas and printables can also help you to celebrate your favorite doctor, future doctor, or healthcare worker.

Decorations:

I made these Snellen inspired eye charts to place around the house to decorate. There are some free editable versions that you can find online, however I wanted a thicker font and more control over where each letter was placed as well as a border so I made my own. My husband doesn’t exactly go by Dr. Dan as Dan is his first not last name but I wanted to incorporate a Little Golden Book my brother had given to the kids titled, Dr. Dan The Bandage Man. I create more personalized eye charts here. The apple a day quote/eye chart is free to download below.

I also made this sign that doubled as his cake topper as well as a coordinating banner. It is available here.

I love making banners because they really are an easy and inexpensive way to quickly decorate a space.

I added some larger anatomical hearts that we just printed out and hung up on the walls. There is a slightly smaller version that is free to download here for kids to color.

On the walls, I cut out large silhouettes of microscopes out of black poster paper and hung up cells. The file for red blood cells is free to download below. I just cut some red construction paper to size to fit through my printer, printed, cut, and stuck them to the walls with a bit of scotch tape. Alternatively, you can just print them out onto white cardstock and have kids color them to help decorate. I also added a few white blood cells and crumpled small squares of purple construction paper to make platelets.

This is the banner I made to go over the cake table.

I also made some coordinating party signs that are free to download below.

There are six signs that I made that will print two to a page. This file is best printed out onto cardstock and cut in half. Each word is placed on a big slide. I just used double sided painter’s tape to adhere the welcome, bathroom, and thank you signs to our doors and placed the activity signs next to each designated setup. For more detail on the party activities, see below.

Party Activities:

The kids colored.

The anatomical heart coloring page can be found here. The personalized anatomy coloring pages are available here.

They made paper bag doctor puppets. This template is best printed out onto regular printer paper and given to kids along with a white paper bag (inexpensive white lunch bags from Walmart), some scissors, glue, and markers. For the setting of the birthday party, I found it best to use the template to make many cuts out of a pile of construction paper for a quick and easy party activity set up. I used a little chip tray to contain all of the paper pieces. The kids enjoyed creating their own doctors with unique hair, skin color, and name. If you glue only the bottom three sides of the pockets, you can actually make things to put inside. My kids used more construction paper and popsicle sticks to create simple and fun reflex hammers.

My kids love tattoos and I found these fun stitches and sutures at Party City. Stapled wounds were even included in this set for all those bloody scalp lacerations. They were very easy for kids to apply themselves and led to a lot of pretend play. The kids ended up pretending to be zombies.

I turned their play kitchen into a doctor’s office. The kids have really had fun with this set up and have enjoyed a lot of open-ended imaginative and cooperative play here. The printables for this dramatic play can be found here.

We grabbed a few of their well loved toys as patients and made a little waiting area for them. I laminated and attached adhesive velcro dots to the bandages so the kids could bandage their injuries. You could also let kids go to town with a box of regular bandages and their stuffies.

The lab area contained a little play microscope, some cell flash cards I made for the kids, as well as more books. The flash cards are available here.

The X-Ray area contained some skulls and skeleton hands from the dollar store as well as all of the kids’ anatomy books.

Food:

This is part of the menu we served. I always like to incorporate the birthday person’s favorite foods and my kids love helping me to come up with different names for each food and drink to match with our theme. This year, in keeping with the medical theme, we decided to name some of the foods after the bacteria that can be the culprit of food poisoning.

Staphylococcus aureus can make people sick from potato salad that is left out too long. Bacillus cereus is another bacteria that can cause vomiting and diarrhea from fried rice. We also labelled a tray of chicken tenders as Campylobacter jejuni.

I added more fun labels to our goldfish crackers reminding people of the health benefits of consuming more fish.

Custom food labels are available here.

Our homemade taco chili recipe can be found here and chicken noodle soup recipe here. The birthday boy had been craving Chef’s salad from a local restaurant so we ordered a large party tray to share.

Here is the birthday boy with his homemade cake. The cake is a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream frosting. I made him this cake topper which also doubled as a party sign. It is available here. I also made these chocolate cupcakes and my husband’s cousin helped me to place pictures of him through the years as toppers.

We served everything on purple platelets (as platelets stain purple under the microscope) and in red blood cell bowls. I also picked out only the red and blue straws to serve and labelled them as arteries and veins. This idea would also be fun for a spooky Halloween party.

These water bottle labels were an easy and quick way to add a bit of fun to plain water bottles. This file is best printed out onto white cardstock and punched out using a 2 inch circle punch. I added some strips of regular white printer paper to some water bottles and my sister-in-law helped me to affix the labels on top. These labels would also be fun for a science theme classroom or party. Some of the kids thought the labels were short for Happy 20th Birthday but a quick explanation led them to understand that a molecule of water was made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. I also labelled our sugar jar with it’s molecular formula and that is free to download above as part of the fun food labels file.

You may also be interested in:

Respiratory Tree Tees and Periodic Table Puppets

Free Anatomical Heart Cut and Paste Activity

Anatomy Hand Book for Kids

I create more printable activities for kids here with the goal of helping to grow kids who love to learn.

To see my other parties click here.

If you use these printables or party ideas, I would love to see it! Please use #sodangfun on social media, tag me @sodangfun on Instagram, or post to my Facebook page.

I hope this post can help you to celebrate your favorite doctor, future doctor, or healthcare worker!