Make Animal Tracks

You do not need to be planning a trip to a sandy beach to try out this fun activity. It can just as easily be done in a sandbox or at a playground that has sand. Follow along with Arianne’s tutorial and discover how to turn inexpensive flip-flops into fun animal track shoes.

Read through the Tutorial: How to Make Animal Track Shoes.

Animal track shoes are creative tools that allow children to imprint animal footprints as they walk, simulating the tracks of various creatures. These shoes can be crafted by attaching cut-out shapes of animal paws to the soles of flip-flops or similar footwear, enabling children to leave behind patterns resembling those of real animals.

Activities Utilizing Animal Track Shoes

Nature Walks and Tracking Exercises: Children can wear these shoes during outdoor excursions to create tracks in soft terrains like sand or mud. This activity encourages them to observe and compare their artificial tracks with real animal footprints, enhancing their tracking skills and attention to detail.

Storytelling and Imaginative Play: Incorporating animal track shoes into storytelling sessions allows children to act out narratives involving animals, fostering creativity and empathy as they embody different creatures.

Art Projects: Using the shoes to stamp tracks onto paper or fabric can be an engaging art activity, helping children explore patterns and develop fine motor skills.

Scientific Exploration: Educators can design experiments where children create tracks and analyze them, introducing basic scientific concepts such as observation, hypothesis formation, and experimentation.

What are the benefits of Animal Track Activities for Children

Enhanced Observation Skills: Tracking activities teach children to notice subtle details in their environment, sharpening their observational abilities.

Spatial Awareness: Following and creating tracks helps children understand spatial relationships and movement patterns, contributing to their physical development.
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Empathy and Connection to Nature: Engaging with animal tracks fosters a sense of connection to wildlife and the environment, promoting empathy and ecological awareness.

Critical Thinking: Determining which animal made a particular track encourages analytical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Physical Activity: These activities involve walking, bending, and sometimes climbing, promoting physical health and coordination.

A classic manipulative in the preschool and early elementary classroom is the snap cube, also known as math cubes, unifix cubes or unit cubes. These little one inch cubes often come in a set of 100 in 10 different colors, and they snap together so they’re easy to use for all sorts of math learning, measuring and more.

No Time for Flashcards has a cute robot printable to use with cubes to measure the height of each robot. That one is free but they also have other printable cube mats that are a paid resource.

Catherine & Co uses math cubes to teach kids about measuring volume. They make a letter from cubes and then measure the volume (there’s a printable worksheet in the post).

Pattern recognition is another fun and easy activity you can do with the cubes. You can use printables like these from Planning Playtime, or just make a pattern from cubes and have kids repeat it or figure out what comes next. There’s another good set of pattern printables at English Created Resources.

Because there are 10 sets of 10 cubes in a pack, these are great for teaching one to one correspondence, counting, sorting and basic addition and subtraction. English Created Resources has great printable number mats you can use to form the number from cubes and count out the number of cubes that corresponds to that number.

ParenTutor has a great collection of snap cube activity ideas, most of which are just pictures, but it’s work taking a look through the post for ideas for using them at home or in the classroom.

To give just a few of their examples, you can match linked blocks to the corresponding number of pieces, use blocks to find different ways to add up to 10, compare numbers and determine which one is more or less, skip counting and weighing different numbers of blocks.

You can also use unit cubes to learn letters, like with these super cute alphabet mats from Fun Learning for Kids. Kids can trace the letter, make it out of cubes and practice writing a word that starts with that letter.

Of course you can also use them to build things, since they are blocks, and there are tons of pattern mats on Teachers Pay Teachers. I also love these dinosaur themed mats from Lets Go to Learn on Etsy.

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