Zoo Animals

Children love learning about animals, especially ones which are big, scary, colourful, wild, and potentially dangerous! Once you have them captivated by the subject you’ll find that they are more than eager to learn the English vocabulary needed to talk about it. There are hundreds of language focus points you can develop when doing topics on zoo animals. Here are just some ideas to get you started.

Introducing vocabulary

Zoo animals - zebras, elephants, hippos, ostriches, tigers, lions, giraffes, monkeys, peacocks, bears, seals, penguins…

What do zoo animals eat?

Study the different types of food that zoo animals eat. Part of the fun of going to a zoo is watching the animals being fed. Discover how often they should be fed and what exactly they eat.

What noises do they make?

You may find that where you teach the animals make different noises to those back home! This is generally true of farm and domestic animals (cats, dogs, cows, ducks etc) but see if any zoo animals make different noises. The children will love making the noises to compare to your English zoo animal noises.

Colours of the zoo

Animals and birds such as parrots, pink flamingos, giraffes, lions, zebras, etc. are a great way of learning new colours and pattern vocabulary such as stripes, dots, zigzags, multicoloured, etc. You could draw outlines of the animals for the children to fill in with the correct colours and patterns. Easily adapted to younger learners.

Zoo games

Sleeping lions

Great for the end of a lesson as a calming activity. Everyone has to put their heads n their folded arms on their desks and keep as still as possible. If they move they are out!

Stick the tail on the elephant

Draw a large picture of the back of an elephant. Blindfold the children, gently spin them around and urge them into the direction of the elephant poster holding the tail of the elephant with a piece of blu-tack. Draw a number next to where they put the tail, have a number per student and see who’s the closet at the end of the game.

Click on the subject so you can get free flashcards of different kinds of animals. Enjoy! :)