Operation Day aka Vowel Surgery

I can't even begin to tell you how much fun Operation Day was in our classroom.  I saw this blog post by Kickin' It In Kindergarten and immediately bought her Vowel Surgery pack.  I started thinking of how I wanted to implement it in my classroom and decided we were going to do it on our "O Day" for our A-Z Countdown to Summer.  I created a bunch more centers to go along with her unit because I wanted to have some more options of things to do.  My kids had soooo much fun and several asked, "Can we do this again tomorrow?"  I was exhausted.  I was so worth all the work for this day.


To start off, all my kids came in and they got scrubbed in and dressed for surgery.

We watched a short video about what doctors do during surgeries.


We had our headlamps on too.  We wanted to be able to see what we were doing.


We started off by using Seesaw and we recorded what the job of a surgeon is.  We had to state 3 things that surgeons do.


We had several centers that we had to rotate to.  At this center, we played Operation.





Each station had blood bags at them.  These were filled with red food coloring and water.  I did run out of food coloring so we had to use red Kool-Aid.

I had Bio-Hazard boxes at some of the stations.

This was the Vowel Surgery Station that I got from Kickin' It In Kindergarten.  I had cookie trays at the table with tweezers.

Kids had to put the missing vowels in the word cards.

I had a waiting room set up.  In the waiting room kids had to read the eye charts.  The eye chart had sight words in it.






In the waiting room, there were baby dolls aka:  The Patients.  Each patient had a chart with them that listed all their ailments on it.  The doctors had to read their patients charts and give them a diagnosis.  They had to take a picture of the chart with the Seesaw app and then touch the record button and read it and say their diagnosis.  There was also a book area to read books while waiting for the doctors to get done.




























I had a bunch of supplies out for them to use on their patients.

Click here to hear a doctor giving a diagnosis after reviewing their patients chart.

At the station below, kids used the our light table to view some x-rays.  They had to put the bones together to form a skeleton.

In this station, the doctors used microscopes to view different viruses.













Here the doctors were making books in Book Creator.  They found band-aids around the classroom that had sight words on them.  They had to take a picture of the band-aids and then make a book out of the words.  They recorded themselves reading the words.









I had a parent donate some pill bottles to our class.  When of our end of the year assessments was sorting.  I put a bunch of different shaped on pills and had the kids sort the pills with similar shapes into pill bottles.






















I loved this center.  The doctors were working on their fine motor skills when they were fixing the babies.  I got a bunch of babies from The Dollar Tree and cut them.  Some had cuts on their arms, legs, foreheads, sides, etc.  The doctors had to use a needle and string and had to stitch them up.  I had gauze and band-aides here too,













At this center doctors were counting out viruses to put in the vials.  The vials had a number on them.  The doctors had to use a tweezers and put the matching amount of pills in the vials.




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Finally to end our day, we made treats with syringes that had frosting in them.  We used Twizzlers and made them look like a Red Cross sign.















This was an amazing day.  I was able to step back and watch my kids have so much fun while using skills that we learned throughout the year.  They were socializing with one another, using problem solving skills, using technology, reading, counting, sorting all while having fun!  I have Kickin' It In Kindergarten to thank for this awesome day!