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What kind of animal is this?

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What Kind of Animal is This?

In these games , kids need to be able to tell the difference between mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, amphibians, and other kinds of animals. Each game is full of animations, sounds, and fun!

Features: Fish, Mammal, Bird, Crustacean, Mollusk, Reptile

Features: Mammal, Reptile,
Amphibian, Insect, Bird

Features: Mammal, Bird,
Reptile, Insect

Features: Mammal, Bird,
Reptile, Insect, Arachnid, Fish

Features: Mammal, Bird,
Amphibian, Reptile, Insect

Have feedback? Have an idea or suggestion for the Kid's Corner? We'd love to hear it. Email us!

For help with the different kids of animals, visit our animal pages for illustrated and fun ways to learn about mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish!

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What kind of Animal is This? Online Animal games for kids! Sheppard Software

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What Kind of Animal is This? In these games , kids need to be able to tell the difference between mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, amphibians, and other kinds of animals. Each game is full of animations, sounds, and fun!

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This gives you key questions and key information that you need to know as a teacher

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Lesson 1: Animal Classification | MpalaLive

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One person thinks of a specific animal and its properties and says, "I'm thinking of an animal." The other students ask "yes-no" questions about the animal's properties in an effort to guess its identity. Students use the classification properties used in previous games (lays eggs, has feathers, etc) or just ask, "Is it an amphibian?"

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Using the book: 'The Gruffalo' to teach animal characteristics

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Using the book: 'The Gruffalo' to teach animal characteristics

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Step by step guide. You can use this for the introduction? To review animal features/

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Axel Scheffler (Illustrator)

Comprehension Strategies: Visualizing, Inferring

Arts Modalities: Visual Art, Drama

A mouse is taking a stroll through the deep, dark wood when along comes a hungry fox, then an owl, and then a snake. The mouse is smart enough to know he would be a tasty treat, so he describes the gruffalo. Visualize the gruffalo: a creature with terrible claws, terrible tusks, terrible jaws, knobbly knees, turned-out toes, and a poisonous wart at the end of its nose. Wait. Could there really be such a thing as a gruffalo?

chart with picture of gruffalo (covered for beginning of lesson)

crayons or markers
character masks (optional)

Before you begin reading, show your class the spread of pages in the book that shows the setting.

Activate schema by asking questions such as:

"Have you ever been in the deep, dark wood?"

"What animals live in the forest?"

Discuss the words predator and prey.

Show the cover of the book with the picture of the gruffalo covered.

Explain that as you read the first half of the book, the students should listen for clues that help them visualize what a gruffalo might look like. Read aloud until the gruffalo makes his first appearance.

Have the class help you make a chart similar to the one shown that lists the physical characteristics of the gruffalo.

Tell students to pretend that they have been asked to illustrate the book. How would they draw the gruffalo based on the clues given in the text? Provide time for students to draw and then share their illustrations.

For added fun, play the song from the audio recording of the book. (Available at audible.com. Click the image to go to the recording.)

You can also listen to the song with this youtube link:

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Axel Scheffler (Illustrator) Comprehension Strategies: Visualizing, Inferring Arts Modalities: Visual Art, Drama A mouse is taking a stroll through the deep, dark wood when along comes a hungry fox, then an owl, and then a snake. The mouse is smart enough to know he would be a tasty treat, so he describes the gruffalo.

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Fur, feathers and scales what’s in the box?

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Fur, feathers and scales what’s in the box?

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Have mystery boxes and get students to identify the external features

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The easiest way to introduce a child to the system we use to classify various groups of animals is to start by learning about body coverings. This post will only cover animals that have fur, feathers and scales but you can add the others (exoskeleton and skin) if and when you feel your child is ready.

Here are some simple and fun body covering activities to get your child familiar with fur, feathers and scales.

Body Covering Activities

There may be laws in your country governing the use of wildlife and their products (feathers, skins and fur) so make sure you obtain them through legal means (check with zoos and your local wildlife authority). Otherwise, I suspect it will be easier for most of you to go with the substitutes below.
Substitute animal products

Feathers - Can be easily bought from your local craft shop these days

Hair/fur - Use your own hair or the fur of your dog after they've had a haircut (that's what we did!). You could even use one of your child's stuffed toys!

Scales - Buy imitation snake skin from your local fabric shop, or use your handbag. You could also just use a snake toy that has imitation scales for the rubbing activity too.

Animal Crayon Rubbings

Using the naturally cast off body covering of animals can make a great rubbing activity. Miss Possum had fun seeing the different types of patterns that were created when placing paper over them and colouring with crayons. She liked this so much that I designed a printable for it. You can download it by clicking the link below.
Fur, Feather and Scales Printable

Fur, feathers and scales what's in the box?

Using three tissue boxes, we created a sensory activity. Using touch, Miss Possum had to guess the body covering and an animal the body covering may belong to.

Fur, feathers and scales cover up collage

We used the same printable to match the body covering to the animal and pasted the body covering onto the printable.

Touching live animals

It's important to take every opportunity to develop a child's understanding of the basic body coverings using real animals too. You can do this by talking about the different body coverings on live animals you may see with your child.

Look closer

Inspect each body covering and notice differences between each.

While doing these activities talk about:

The different types of body coverings

How they feel? Are they rough or smooth, soft or hard?

What's unique about each type of body covering?

Some animals that have each body covering

Children can amuse themselves with these fun activities and they probably don't even realise they are building their knowledge of basic animal classification. If they really enjoy them, know quite a few different types of animals and now recognise scales, fur and feathers, then they may be ready to move on to the next learning activities. The next post will give you some activities that will build your child's understanding that animal body coverings help us put animals into groups.

We've learnt more about animal classification. Here's some fun activities to help you extend on these activities.
More fun with Fur, Feathers and Scale

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We have hair to cover up, snakes have scales and birds, well, they have feathers. The easiest way to introduce a child to the system we use to classify various groups of animals is to start by learning about body coverings.

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This learning outcome is about the external features of animals. None of these activities fit the learning outcome.