Animals games and activities
for ESL kids lessons

Games and activities for teaching “Animals” to ESL kids

Animal races

This is a good way to teach the structure “like a / an”. After teaching animal vocab and practicing moving like each animal, line the students up ready for a race. The teacher starts each race with “Ready? Run like (an elephant)!” And the students try to win the race. Other ideas: jump like a kangaroo, crawl like a panther, swim like a fish, fly like a bird, walk like a chicken, etc.

You’d be surprised how much even adult students enjoy this game.

Blindfold guess

Blindfold a student and give him/her an object to feel. The student must guess what the object is. This works well with plastic animals as they are a little challenging to guess (I always throw in a dinosaur to spice things up!).

Dog & cat chase

Have students sit in a circle. The teacher walks around the outside of the circle patting the students on the head saying “dog” each time. Suddenly, teacher says “cat” as s/he touches a student’s head and then that student must chase the teacher around the circle. The teacher must try to sit in the student’s spot before being tagged by the chasing student.

If the teacher is tagged s/he must touch the heads again. If the teacher makes it back without being touched then the chasing student walks around the circle touching heads. This can be done with any variation of pair words (e.g. big & small, happy & sad, can, can’t, etc.).

Don’t drop it!

This is a great vocabulary practice game for animal vocabulary. Have all students sit in a circle. Use a ball (or even a plastic animal) and toss it to one student. But you must say one animal word as you pass. The student then throws to another student and says a different animal word. If the student you threw it to drops it, he/she is out. Also, if the student can’t think of an animal word within a few seconds he/she is out. The game keeps going until you have one winner.

Hint animal game

As a review of animals flashcards, the teacher holds some cards without showing any to the students. Then the teacher tells the kids that they are going to receive 3 hints, so they need to listen carefully.

For example:

1. I am yellow.
2. I have long hair.
3. I am strong.

Who am I? Well, a lion of course!

You can make it in different levels depending on how much English you use or which vocab you use.

Lesson plans about animals

We also have two FREE lesson plans about animals which include games and activities as well as other lesson materials.

• Click to download our farm animals lesson plan.
• Click to download our zoo animals lesson plan.

Songs about animals

We have two songs available for download about animals:

• Old MacDonald
• Let’s go to the zoo

Zoo game

This is a fun activity for young learners on the topic of animal noises. After teaching the animals and their noises, sit each student in a different part of the classroom and assign them as different animals (to make it clearer you can give each student a flashcard of the animal they are representing). Walk around the room and talk to each student, who can only reply as an animal.

For example:

Teacher: Hello Yumi
Student 1: Moo! (cow)
Teacher: What’s your name?
Student 2: Roar! (lion)
Teacher: How are you, Kenta?
Student 3: “Hissssss!” (snake)