Arctic Fox Activities for Kids

There are lots of winter animals that are fun to learn about when it’s cold outside. I’ve covered polar bears and penguins before, but this time let’s learn about the arctic fox.

The arctic fox, also known as the snow fox or white fox, lives in the arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere. They have warm, thick, white fur and fluffy tails that help them keep warm and camouflage them in the snow. Their fur actually changes color through the year, and you can learn about how and why that happens from Discvr.

They are small omnivores, with bodies that grow to about 18-27 inches (45.7 to 68.5 cm) and tails that are about 13.75 inches/35 cm long.

Learn more about them from this post on National Geographic Kids. If you need some arctic fox books for your library, check out the Scholastic book Arctic Foxes or Arctic Fox: Fantastic Animal Facts for Kids.

Add some arctic animals to an arctic sensory bin for extra fun while learning, like this one from Fun Learning for Kids. If you don’t want to do ice, Mama Megan Allysa has a version using Epsom salt as the base, or use fake snow (you could also use cloud dough) like this one from Fun-a-Day.

Learn how to draw an arctic fox from Art Projects for Kids, or use a coloring page like the one from First Palette.

Simple Living Creative Learning has a printable pack about the life cycle of the arctic fox and a printable fact book. This pack of more than 80 pages also includes alphabet cards, letter tracing, three-part cards, math activities, I-spy, do a dot letter matching, writing pages and more. It’s available to download for free in black and white or in color.

The Who Lives in the Arctic spinner craft from Non Toy Gifts helps kids learn about other animals that live where the arctic fox does, including reindeer, polar bears, seals and narwhal.

Fairy Poppins has a nice set of arctic fox writing and labeling activities at Teachers Pay Teachers.

And of course we can’t forget the crafts! Make an adorable arctic fox face using crafts sticks and this tutorial from Made to be a Momma. This printable from Simple Everyday Mom also uses craft sticks as the body of the fox. Or make a handprint arctic fox like this one from Our Kid Things.

Learning numbers actually involves a few different skills, from recognizing the shape of the number and knowing the word that goes with it to understanding one to one correspondence for counting and what order the numbers go in.

A lot of this is learned best through play and activities that get kids counting and tracing and otherwise interacting with numbers. These activities can help.

I specifically mentioned tracing above because of these number formation rhymes cards from Teaching Mama, which can be used in lots of ways to practice making the shapes of the numbers, including tracing, lining up items on the number shapes (and counting them!), using playdough to shape the numbers and so on. Each number has a little rhyme to help you remember how to make it, which is cute.

And speaking of playdough, you can find lots of playdough number mats with different themes for kids to use as they learn about numbers. Preschool Play and Learn, for example, has these cute apple themed ones that also teach one to one correspondence as you learn the numbers and count to 10.

Or use these tree-themed ones from Live Over Cs to form the numbers, count out items on a ten frame and place the correct number of items in the tree to match the number (do this with playdough, little buttons or whatever manipulatives you have on hand). Your little builders will also love these Duplo number mats from Life Over Cs, which allow you to shape the number out of blocks and count out the number of blocks that corresponds to each number.

I also love these mats from The Savvy Sparrow that include the number and the word you can trace with playdough or marker, showing how to count the number on your fingers, a tens frame and a number line.

Finger plays and counting songs are lots of fun for little ones, too, and Childhood 101 has a great collection of songs and rhymes having to do with numbers (as well as printable song cards you can use with them.

This cardboard roll number chain form Hands On As We Grow would be a fun addition to singing number songs or to use in other play and counting games. And we all love something easy to make with stuff we already have.

Older kids who already know the order of numbers can also use these connect the dot number printables from Fun Learning for Kids. Or use the shapes for playdough mats or to practice tracing even for kids who don’t know all the numbers in order yet.

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