Dog Themed Learning Activities

May 6, 2025 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

I read that May is National Pet Month, so I thought it would be fun to share some animal related learning and craft activities this month. First up is dogs (not because they’re my favorite, just the easiest LOL).

Animal faces and dog bones give us lots of options for adding in a little learning. Keep it simple for little ones with this Dog’s Colorful Day bones color sorting activity from Pre-K Pages. It includes a printable bone shape in different colors to make it easy. Read the book and do this activity with your littles.

Or try the alphabet puppy chow activity that’s also from Pre-K Pages. Here you find letters on the bone and use alphabet magnets to “feed” the dog.

If you have a dog you can use the printable from Sunny Day Family to see what your kid knows about the dog. This is like one of those Mother’s or Father’s Day printables where they say how old the dog is, their (the dog’s) favorite things and what they (the child) likes to do with them. This is one page of their printable dog activity pack that includes labeling parts of a dog, a word search and coloring pages.

Homeschool Preschool has a dog themed memory matching game, which includes fun facts about dogs on the cards.

There are lots of books with dogs as characters, and this activity from Affordable Homeschooling uses If You Give a Dog a Donut to practice sequencing with a free printable.

Harry the Dirty Dog is another fun dog story, about a dog who doesn’t want to take a bath. Homeschool Share has a printable lap book that goes with the story and includes vocabulary, human vs. animal needs, wild vs. domesticated animals, sequencing and more.

If you want to do more activities surrounding dirty dogs, Homeschool Preschool has a printable sequencing activity about giving a dog a bath where kids can trace the sentences for each step and them write them on their own.

And if you have any little plastic dog toys (or any pets for this one) you can get them dirty and wash them with this pet cleaning sensory bin from Pre-K Pages (using mud and water so maybe do this one outside).

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Easy Outdoor Games to Play with Kids

After talking about the pirate themed chalk obstacle course the other day, I got to thinking about other easy, low prep games and activities you can do with kids outside. A lot of these are ideas I found on Pinterest that don’t link to blogs anymore if they ever did, but often that’s all the detail you need to figure out what’s going on.

First, a couple from blogs that are still alive. If you have a lot of trees in your yard or in your park, you probably also have a lot of sticks, so you can pretty easily do this stick maze activity from Mother Natured. Build the maze yourself or have one child build if for another. Either way it’s lots of fun and you can keep it built to use as a labyrinth or for pretend play.

If it’s hot where you live you might want outdoor activities that involve water like this fill the bucket relay game. The only thing you might not have at home is giant sponges, but this is still pretty low prep, inexpensive and lots of fun if you have two or more kids to play. Check out how to do it from The Resourceful Mama. And check out my post all about ice and water sensory activities for more ideas to beat the heat.

Make some x’s and o’s or use something you already have to be your game pieces (you can also just draw them on paper plates for a super fast version) and make a large tic tac toe board on the sidewalk. The bonus of reusable game pieces is kids can play with the same grid over and over, which is great if you don’t have a ton of space.

I also love the idea of drawing a big bullseye on the sidewalk or driveway and using beanbags or sponges to try to hit the target. If you have hula hoops you can also set them in a grassy area and have kids try to hit them.

Check out more fun outdoor games for kids from The Printable Princess. These are more for big groups of kids, but if you’ve got a classroom full these are good ones to have on hand for getting some energy out.

Do you have favorite outdoor games for kids to play when it’s hot? I’d love to hear about them!

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