Printable Animal Flash Cards

It’s pretty generally true that kids love animals, and learning about different kinds of animals is a fun way to learn about the natural world.

I recently came across this set of printable wild animal flash cards from 123 Homeschool 4 Me, which includes pictures of 32 different animals that are labeled with their names. I like these because they are actual photographs, not drawings, which makes them great for kids learning the names of animals.

But there are lots of other options out there for printable animal flash cards. These from Super Simple have cartoony drawings but are really cute for little kids to use. This set includes 38 cards.

Flashcards for Kindergarten has a set of 100 animal flash cards with the animal names on them, perfect for kindergarten, grade school or ESL learners.

And MES Learning has printable and online flashcards, as well as worksheets, bingo cards and other printables to supplement learning.

Of course you can just use the pictures to learn the names of different animals, but animal flash cards are also great to use to expand learning. Here are a few ideas.

Choose an animal and share/learn facts about that animal.
Match the cards to animal toys
Print a set of animal pictures that aren’t labeled and match the labeled animal to the unlabeled one
Make a scavenger hunt by hiding animals around the room
Sort animals by habitat or different features such as feathers vs. fur, lives in water or on land, where it is cold, where it is hot, etc.
Use as a writing or storytelling prompt
Set up a pretend play or sensory box with an animal theme and use the flash cards to identify animals that might live there (or hide cards in the sensory box for kids to find)
add a spelling element with alphabet magnets or write the words for kids to trace to practice writing

I’m sure there are lots of other ways you can use animal flash cards; I’d love to hear your ideas!

Beach Addition Flash Cards [Lesson Plans]

Fun Activities to Learn about Butterflies

Candy Corn Math Activities

Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels!

Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters).

Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!

Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study.

We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)

Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more.

Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity.

Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet.

For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet.

And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.

Have you read?

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