Six classroom activities with animals

Animals are one of the topics children love most, which makes them a perfect way into science, language, maths and geography. Here are six activities you can run with AnimalWorld Kids on a classroom screen or on tablets.

1. Picture walk (ages 3 to 5)

Show the grid of all animals on the board. Ask pupils to find an animal with stripes, an animal that lives in the water, an animal that flies. Tap the "Read it to me" button so that non-readers can follow the short description.

2. Sound detectives (ages 3 to 7)

Play Guess the Sound together. Before tapping an answer, ask the class to vote with their hands. Talk about how they knew: was it loud or soft, high or low? This builds listening skills and the vocabulary to describe sounds.

3. Habitat sorting (ages 5 to 8)

Print the "Where do they live?" worksheet, or use the animal homes pages. In groups, pupils sort animals by habitat and explain one reason why each animal suits its home, for example thick fur in polar lands.

4. Food chain line-up (ages 6 to 9)

Give each pupil an animal card. Using the "What does it eat?" section of each animal page, the class builds a food chain by standing in order, from plants to the top predator. Discuss what would happen if one link disappeared.

5. Animal fact file (ages 7 to 10)

Each pupil chooses an animal, reads its page and fills in the "My animal fact file" worksheet: drawing, home, food, size and a favourite fact. Encourage them to note the source shown under each fact, a first step towards checking information.

6. World tour (ages 7 to 10)

Use the world map page. Each group takes a continent or an ocean, lists the animals that live there and presents one of them to the class. Combine it with your own map work to locate countries and climates.

Tips for the classroom

All pages work without accounts, so pupils do not need to sign in. Games and quizzes never show ads. Worksheets print in black and white as well as in colour, and every activity works in all ten languages of the site, which is helpful in multilingual classes.