Stuck for activity ideas to get your kids playing outside? Here are five animal footprint activities your kids will love to interact with time and time again.
Children love finding and guessing animal footprints. They can be super tricky to find, though – especially if you live in the city!
The five footprint printables below give your kids the opportunity to interact with and identify animal footprints, no matter where you live. I’ve listed some fun activities to go with them. Enjoy!
Animal footprints to download and use
Click the picture below to download the animal footprint printable. </strong
1. Animal Footprint Tracking Game
Place one set of animal footprints in a trail-like manner around your yard or house.
Encourage your children to guess what the animal is by identifying its footprints.
Place little clues through the trail for younger children. At the end of the trail put a picture of the animal.
|
Animal |
Clue One |
Clue two |
|
Duck |
Feather |
Picture of a pond |
|
Bear |
A jar of honey |
Picture of a cave |
|
Frog |
Picture of flies |
Picture of a pond |
|
Koala |
Gum leaf |
Grey fur picture |
|
Snake |
Picture of a rat |
Picture of scales or a snake skin |
2. Use the animal footprints to announce a surprise
Like activity one, trail the prints around the house and have the surprise at the end.
|
Animal |
Surprise |
Clue at the end of the trail |
|
Duck |
Going to the park |
Gourmet duck food |
|
Bear |
Teddy bear picnic |
Teddy bear picnic |
|
Frog |
Going to hunt for tadpoles |
A small fish net |
|
Koala |
Going on bush walk- spotlighting |
Boots and a camera or a torch |
|
Snake |
– |
– |
|
All the animals |
We are going to the zoo |
Zoo tickets |
3. Guess the animal from its footprint
Print off pictures of each animal (the internet has plenty) and help your child match them with their footprints. When finding pictures, try to get the animal’s foot in the photo to help your child work out the correct footprint match.
4. Use the footprint as a template to make look-alike dirt prints
We used the sand pit to make our prints.
5. Use the prints for party decorations and activities
I hope these wildlife footprint activities are a great source of fun and education for your family. Make sure you keep your animal foot prints in an envelope so you can use them again and again! Have you found any animal prints lately?
Penny…You never fail to amaze me with your genius ideas for including animals/wild-life in everyday activity and play. Great post and fabulous resources!
Wow ! These are all amazing ideas ! Love the templates for dirt prints and pin the footprint on the duck ! Won’t be long till the twinlets get to enjoy all these goodies !
We have a lot of frog prints around our house at the moment and the snakes (tiger) are loving this! They have been spotted by several neighbours but thankfully I haven’t seen any snake prints yet.
I totally love these prints and will be printing them off to add to my resources collection…..thank you so much Penny! x
Thanks so much Janice. I’m glad you and Tiger like them!
Aww …such a cute game 😀 Love it !! M sure the kids would too 😀
This is so fun! Two thumbs up for you because you manage to think about these ideas. Very helpful for the kids specially those toddlers. Great job!
Cool very exciting game for children. I must try this with my kids. Do you still have more of these games?
Thanks for sharing them here!
-Evert
These are some exciting stuff. My kids would love these.
Thanks for sharing.
-Jason
This is cool! Downloadable and printable animal footprints and activities for the kids. Thanks for sharing this.. Keep up the good work! 🙂
I love the cute Koala foot print! 🙂 Thanks for this printable footprint.. My kids will surely love playing this game..
This looks like so much fun, thanks for the ideas and actually doing all the work for all the lazy parents out there and creating the footprints sheets!
Thanks!! This is an interesting article that i can addapt for use on a game farm in Western Cape, South Africa.. No bears here, but we do have other wildlife that leave their spoor on a gypsum loaded clay “vlei”(lake) area that when water levels low, is perfect for animal spoor! Water Buffalo, Giraffe, eland, zebra, pelicans, flamingo + the domestic goats & dogs. etc….. Insect spoor found more on the sand trails that we use for horseback trail rides.
I am helping the Trail Ride owner to run holiday activities for children – introducing them nof only to horses, but the environent & the animals that inhabit the game farm that we are lucky enough to have access to. I am looking for simple tracking games to help the kids learn the spoor that they can find all over – especoally on the ‘vlei’ area & hopefully see on their game rides or drives. Hopefully to create a fun memory & love of nature in the process!
Any advice & ideas would be hugely appreciated!!
Thanks a million for the kick start basic idea already!
Best wishes, JO