Preschool and kindergarten science activities about tracking animals

© 2009 – 2022 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved

These preschool and kindergarten science activities build on what almost young children are already interested in — animals! And in addition to teaching lessons almost biology, they also offer kids opportunities to practice belittling, spatial, and symbolic reasoning skills.

Where to begin: Costless exploration with print-making

A child sees a footprint in the mud. Who left information technology? How can she know?

She might simply memorize what different types of footprints look similar. Merely there'southward a bigger, more interesting learning opportunity — one that involves spatial awareness and detective piece of work. What happens when an object gets pressed into the mud? What shape, what physical impression, does information technology leave behind?

To get kids thinking near the processes that create fauna tracks, we should requite them the run a risk to experiment with print-making themselves.

So kickoff out by providing kids with a print-making medium and supplies. It might exist pigment and newspaper. Or possibly some craft dough. Alternatively, you tin use a surface of damp sand or dirt.

Then encourage kids to brand prints with their hands and feet. You can give them plastic animal toys, likewise, and prove them how to make impressions.

Advice almost supplies

If you want to utilise pigment and paper, I recommend that you test things out first. Finger paints tin can exist as well thick to leave behind clean impressions, and some poster paints may be likewise runny for younger kids to command. One solution is to make a stamp pad by soaking a sponge in nontoxic poster paint.

Salt dough or play dough is a expert medium for making toy footprints. Ideally, you want a modeling chemical compound that is soft enough that kids tin can roll it out themselves with a rolling pin. Note that some clays and commercial play doughs are too strong for young children to practise this easily.

Wet sand is fun, as well. But it can be hard to see prints if the dominicus is straight overhead, then if yous want to piece of work outdoors yous might effort timing your activities for the morning time or late afternoon.

And if you plan to work with dirt? Bring a little h2o and a spatula to prepare the surface, making information technology damp and smooth.

Questions to enquire

Equally kids make tracks with animal toys, have them look at the toy feet and consider these questions. What exercise the feet look like? What shape are they? Do some creatures (like elephants and sauropod dinosaurs) have similar looking feet? Are their tracks similar, also?

Later kids have had fourth dimension to investigate on their own, you tin can try these science activities.

1. Observing and describing different kinds of feet

Accept kids wait at real feet, including not-man feet. The data might come up from photographs or drawings, just don't forget to take a look at some live models as well. If you lot don't have a non-human companion available at dwelling house to examine, you tin observing creatures at the park, zoo, or pet store. And don't forget to encourage your child's investigations by posing questions.

• How many toes are at that place?
• What does the lesser surface of the pes look like? Is it bumpy? Scaly? Smooth? Flat? Arched? What shapes do yous come across?
• When the creature walks, what parts of its feet touch the footing?
• Does the human foot accept nails? Hooves? Claws?
• If at that place are claws, do they touch the ground when the animal walks (as they practise with dogs)? Or are the claws retracted (equally they are in cats)?

2. Fauna track testing

This is some other activity that makes use of plastic fauna toys. When your kid isn't looking, create a series of different tracks using the toy animals. Then present your child with the tracks — and the toys — and ask your kid to friction match them upward. Which toy made which track?

There are several ways to tackle this problem. One approach is to simply "eyeball" it: A child takes a wait at the feet on a toy,  and makes a prediction. What kind of tracks would these feet likely make? Then your kid checks his answer past making his own fix of tracks with this toy. Exercise they match?

Alternatively, your kid might want to try placing the toy's feet over the top of a given runway (to see if it'due south a skilful fit). If it looks promising, your child can then ostend the match by re-creating a similar prepare of tracks.

Or maybe your child will prefer to skip the preliminaries and simply brand new impressions — comparing his tracks with yours to discover a lucifer.

Whichever approach your kid takes, get your kid talking. When your kid makes a prediction, or claims to have a lucifer, ask her to explain. And encourage your kid to use spatial language to describe her ideas.

3. Matching pictures

You can also present kids with pictures of dissimilar kinds of feet and ask kids to friction match the pictures with the right tracks.

To practise this, make your own footprint cards. On each bill of fare, attach a picture show of different type of animal footprint (e.g., a horse's, a goose's, an elephant's, a canis familiaris's). And then, on the back, attach pictures of the animal and animal foot associated with that footprint. Make a second prepare of cards identical with the start except that they are one-sided, showing the footprints only.

To play, arrange the double-sided cards on the tabular array with the foot pictures face. Then endeavor to match with the single-sided footimpress cards. Kids tin can check to see if their answers are right by turning over the double-sided cards.

For gratuitous, printable pictures of Due north American animal tracks, check out opens in a new windowacquit-tracker.com. Author Kim Cabrera offers a complimentary PDF guide to over 50 different kinds of tracks common in Due north America.

4. Looking for real tracks and other signs of animal life

Are you ready to try tracking animals in the wild? Mayhap you don't alive near wild places. Just even if you're stuck in the metropolis, you may nevertheless find opportunities to track living creatures. Here are some examples:

• Cat foot prints on automobiles
• Scratch marks left on copse by cats and squirrels
• Prints left in the snowfall
• Snail and slug tracks
• Prints left in sand (e.g., at the playground)
• Debris or scat left by birds, rodents, pets, etc.
• Spider webs
• Nut shells discarded past squirrels
• Evidence that leaves take been eaten by insects, snails, slugs, or other animals

And of course there are animal droppings, or scat, to consider. Simply brand sure your child stays at a safe distance, and keep in mind that touch isn't the simply manner to pick upward germs from creature droppings.  Some fauna waste — like infected rodent debris and urine deposits — tin can transmit disease when inhaled.

What can your child do when he or she finds something interesting? Measure and record information technology! When you go out tracking together, take along a ruler and a notebook. You might too keep a photo journal of your discoveries. Earlier taking a moving-picture show, put a money alongside the feature of involvement in order to requite the viewer a sense of scale.

And bring a flashlight, too. Tracks tin can be hard to see in the directly sunlight. If you polish a flashlight on them, tilted at an bending, y'all can create shadows inside a rail and better run across information technology'due south contours.

five. Experimenting with human footprints

This last science activity requires a caste of concentration to stay on chore and call back about the concepts. So information technology'southward advisable for older kids — including motivated kindergarteners. The project? Have kids create footprints while moving at different speeds — walking, running slow, and dashing quickly.

For best results, attempt this on a clammy, sandy beach or expanse of damp dirt. Kids go barefoot, and meet how their tracks vary.

What tracks are left behind when they walk? Or run? Practice the shapes of the footprints wait dissimilar? For case, if a kid runs, is the heel strike more or less prominent? What about the ball of the foot? Is information technology possible to tell if someone was walking or running by looking at their tracks?

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Resource: More than information about brute tracking, and other preschool science activities

As noted above, bear-tracker.com offers complimentary guides to brute tracks. There are also many helpful articles virtually tracking. Information technology isn't a website for immature children, but it's a cracking resource for adults.

Y'all might also be interested in my commodity about the opens in a new window anthropology of tracking, as well as the following books:

• Selsam, Millicent East. 1995. Big tracks, fiddling tracks: Post-obit beast prints. New York: Harper Collins.
• George, Lindsay Barrett. 1999.In the snow: Who'due south been here? New York: Harper Collins.
• George, Lindsay Barrett. 1998.Into the woods: Who's been hither? New York: Harper Collins.

These are picture books for immature children, and they feature animals found in Due north American habitats.

For an additional resource — a visual reference that features creatures from all over the world — try the National Geographic guide, Animal Tracks and Signs: Rails Over 400 Animals From Big Cats to Backyard Birds.

Looking for more science activities for young children? See this Parenting Science guide.

Content of "Creature tracks: Preschool and kindergarten scientific discipline actitivities" last modified 10/2021

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