Animals, Preschool Learning Activities

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Dramatic Play
ANIMAL SAFARI _____________________________ View This Activity
Ages: Kids of all Ages

Language / Fine Motor
ANIMAL THEME SPELLING WORKSHEET
Good writing practice for younger kids and spelling practice for emergent readers.
Ages: Pre-K to Second Grade

Fun facts about the rat:
* Rats breed at three to four months of age, and can produce up to seven litters a year, each containing 10 to 20 babies. So if you were a rat, you'd get around 70-140 new brothers and sisters each and every year! And by the time you were 1-year-old, you'd already be a great-grandparent!

* Just like the book city rats are indeed a lot different from country rats. Country rats have a pretty good diet and are clean little animals. City rats are a lot dirtier.

* It is said that there are at least as many rats in the United states as humans. More than 1,000 rats per acre were reported on one Iowa Farm. Rats are considered pests to farmers, because each one can eat up to 50 pounds of grain a year.

* Rodents are immensely clever and adaptable, and can even figure out how to delicately remove food from a trap without springing it.

* In 2009, A scientific team in Papua New Guinea found a new species of giant rat. It measures 32 inches long and weighs more than 3 pounds, making it one of the largest rodents on earth. It was found inside the crater of an extinct volcano.

Related Curriculum ideas:
-Measure out a string and cut it to 32 inches long. Have the kids use it to measure the size of this rat among other things in their classroom.

Language / Cognitive
ANIMAL WORD MATCHING WORKSHEET
A phonics activity for whole-word sounds.
Ages: Pre-K to Kindergarten

Did you know ...
Apes laugh too! In order to find out when laughing began, researchers at the University of Portsmouth in England tickled young humans, chimps, bonobos, orangutans and gorillas. The sounds that these great apes made were so similar, the study concluded, the "origins of human laughter can be traced back at least 10 to 16 million years" to our common ancestor.

Related classroom curriculum idea(s):
*In the spirit of scientific research, try this experiment on your own. Gather your kids in group time for a tickle session. One at a time, apply some intense tickling, while the other children listen. Record their sounds on a 'laugh track,' (tape recorder), and play them back later to see if kids can guess which laugh belongs to which classmate.

Language
ANIMAL MISSING LETTER WORKSHEET
A phonics activity for beginning sounds.
Ages: Preschool to Kindergarten

Some funny animal facts:

* Animal Rights activist in Austria want to have a chimpanzee named Hiasl legally declared a human. Isn’t that silly!
* Mermaids may not be real, but other animal hybrids exist. If you mix together a lion and tiger, you get a liger. Breed a zebra and a horse, you get a zorse.

* Many animals are capable of dancing to a beat, say scientists. You Tube videos have captured hundreds of different animal species moving and grooving to the music.

COLORING SHEETS / COLORING PAGES
L is for Lion
E is for Elephant
G is for Goat
G is for Goose
Chicken
Turtle

Did you know ...
Elephants can't actually run. Most animals walk with a side-to-side swaying motion. When they start to run, they change their stride, lifting all four legs off the ground simultaneously. Elephants, on the other hand, never lift all four legs off the ground at once. They only walk a lot faster. Scientists in Thailand put elephants on a giant treadmill to study this, and found that the most they can do is more of a speed-walk, even at top speed (about 11 m.p.h.).

Related classroom curriculum idea(s):
*Have a speed walking race with the kids on the playground.
*Bring in a video camera, and record the children as they run;
focusing on their legs and lower body. Replay the tape later and have a discussion about how they run is similar/dissimilar to other types of animals.

The good: Estimates of the total number of species on earth range from as few as 5 million to as many as 100 million. Biologists still discover about 50 new species a day; nearly 17,000 new plants and animals were reported in 2006 alone.
The bad: We're losing species at 10,000 times the natural rate...a loss of life so severe and great that we've officially entered the sixth great mass extinction in Earth's history. You're living during a mass extinction just like the dinosaurs!
The ugly: Grandma early in the morning before coffee.

We’re adding new activities to our list every month, so if you didn’t find what you needed, be sure to check back!