Preschoolers enjoy guessing games. Show them pictures of a variety of animals and have the children repeat the names of each several times. Talk about where the animals live, whether the animals are tame or wild, and their place in the environment. Line up the pictures where the preschoolers can view them for reference. Play the “What am I?” game with the children using the names and characteristics of the animals. Ask “What am I?” and pretend to be an animal. For a dog, you can sit up, pant, beg and bark. Preschoolers guess until they get the correct answer. Once they know the names of the animals, they can take turns pretending to be an animal, giving the class chances to guess what animal the preschooler is pretending to be.
While some baby animals appear very like their parents, some do not. Create a series of cards. One set shows adult animals, one per card. Another set shows what the babies look like. Ask the preschoolers to play a game of “Match the baby animals with the adult animals.” Even adult animals don’t all look alike. Dogs, cats, cows and horses have different colors and breeds, and some dogs hardly even look like dogs. Create a set of cards with different colors and breeds of animals. Ask the preschoolers to group the like animals together such as all dog breeds in one pile, all cow breeds in another and so on.
The earth is made up of any number of separate and individual environments. Animals that live in one environment often cannot survive in another. Talk about the different environments from deserts and jungles to forests and farms and the animals that live in each environment. Create or download several different environmental backgrounds. Print out on heavy-weight paper and cut out animals that live in each environment. Hold up each animal and ask the preschoolers to guess in which environment it belongs.
Let the preschoolers listen to a variety of animal sounds. As a class, mimic the sounds. Play a guessing game using either your voice to replicate sounds or sounds from a download or other media source. Ask, “What animal sounds like this?” Make the sound two or three times. If the preschoolers have trouble, provide clues like, “This animal lives in the jungle.” or “This animal has stripes.” Once the preschoolers know the sounds, let them make the sounds for other classmates to guess.