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!

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When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

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