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Guess the Animal

Is it a zebra or a white tiger? A cow or an orca? Children will hone their observation skills and create a drawing of a close-up image of an animal.

Lesson Plan

Supplies Needed

Gather all the supplies needed to bring your craft ideas to life! From paints and markers to glue and scissors, our crafts section has everything to spark creativity and make every project truly special.

  • Paper

Steps

  • Step 1

    Developing good observational skills is invaluable in early childhood. These skills enhance cognitive learning abilities such as attention to detail, critical thinking, and problem-solving. This activity will help children sharpen their skills. Show close-up images of animals. (There are several websites that provide "Guess the animal" quizzes.) Have children try to guess what the animal is before enlarging the image to show the full picture. Can they distinguish a dalmatian from a spotted cow? A jaguar from a falcon? Encourage them to think of ways to tell the animals apart. For example, a jaguar and a hawk might both have spots of brown and white, but a jaguar has fur and a hawk has feathers.

  • Step 2

    Challenge children to create a close-up drawing of an animal of their choice. They might draw the stripes of a zebra, the spots on a giraffe's neck, the patches on a turtle, or anything else.

  • Step 3

    Have children present their close-up pictures and ask the class to try to guess what the animal is.

Standards

SEL: Responsible Decision-Making: Identify a problem or needed decision and recognize that there may be multiple responses.

SEL: Responsible Decision-Making: Identify strategies to solve a problem.

Adaptations

Ask students to draw the full animal they explored in the close up. As they present their pictures to the class, have other students move around the classroom as that animal. How would they walk, fly, or swim? What noise might they make?

Ask children to do this activity with another object or natural item, such as a sunflower with seeds. Have them draw a complete picture of the object they chose. Then have the class draw close ups of a part of the object.