Pet Themed Preschool Activities

Pet Themed Preschool Activities

A full week of pet themed preschool activities including sensory bins, learning activities, and favorite picture books.

Learning about pets is so much fun for preschoolers because the topic is relevant to them – most children either have pets, know someone that does, or have visited a pet store or fair before to see pets in real life.

This makes the topic very interesting to them – they can connect what they learn in the activities to their every day lives. When a topic is interesting and relevant to children, it makes learning a whole lot easier.

Whether you exclusively learn at home, like we do, or are looking to supplement some at home learning opportunities for your preschooler, either way, I’ve got you covered with a week of Pet Themed Activities.

I tend to follow a formula when planning my preschool themes at home.

1. Choose a theme.
2. Create a play shelf with toys that fit the theme.
3. Choose 1-2 easy sensory bin activities.
4. Chose 1-2 hands on learning activities.
5. Choose a couple of coloring activities and worksheets (these get done independently).
6. Choose some free printables that focus on certain skills they’re working on (these get done together).

Let’s see how this formula looks in real life for our pet theme.

Toy Shelf Set Up Formula

You know I’m all about my formulas – and I’ve got one for toy shelf set ups too. I always use the 6-cube shelves because they are affordable, easy to clean, and provide easy access to toys. Here is the link for the pink basket and the white/gray basket (I use these all the time for play shelves!).

Toys that I almost always include are: a pretend play toy, a puzzle, a building toy, books, and a toniebox. This formula covers most of the cubes – you can fill in the remaining cubes with whatever your kid likes the most.

Pet Themed Play Shelf

1. Vet Kit + Vet Vest Dress Up
2. Plastic Animals + Wooden Animals from puzzle (used in sensory bins)
3. Toniebox + Tonie Carrying Case
4. Lincoln Logs (also used in activities)
5. Books (linked at end of post)
6. Pet Care Toys (used in sensory bins)
7. Puzzle + Leap Frog ABC Blues Clues Toy (the top shelf)

Ultimately, you can set your shelf up however you’d like, with the toys that you have – but this gives you an idea of what it can look like. Notice that most of these items had dual purposes for planned out learning activities.

Pet Themed Sensory Bins

We did two different sensory bins for our pet theme because one was used for just one day (it was a messy one-and-done bin!) and I typically like to keep the sensory bin out all week.

Wash the Muddy Pets Sensory Bin

The first pet themed sensory bin that we created was a Wash the Muddy Pets Sensory Bin. I avoided using real mud because we did this indoors AND our mud is frozen solid outside right now.

I was thrilled to come across this fantastic edible ‘mud’ recipe using cocoa powder, cornstarch, water, and old fashioned oats. You can get the full recipe from Active Littles by clicking here. It smells SO good and was the perfect consistency.

Warning: cocoa powder is unsafe for your real life pets – be sure to separate them from the area you are doing your sensory bin in so that they don’t accidentally ingest any spilled ‘mud’ as it is most definitely toxic for dogs. I’d be negligent in my duties as a Vet Tech if I didn’t mention that.

Sensory Bin Supplies:

• two sensory bins (smaller bins work fine for this activity)
• plastic pets
• old toothbrushes
• mini strainers
• small cups
• a couple of old towels
• dish soap
• cocoa powder
• cornstarch
• old fashioned oats

Sensory Bin Instructions:

1. Prepare your edible mud in your first bin by following this recipe from ActiveLittles.com
2. Prepare your soapy water in your second bin.
3. Plop your plastic animals into your muddy bin.
4. Set out some cups, strainers, and toothbrushes in your soapy water bin.
5. Place each bin side by side on top of old towels to help contain any mess.
6. Demonstrate getting the pets all muddy, moving them to the washing bin, scrubbing them with toothbrushes, and rinsing off the soapy water. Repeat again and again.

Set Sensory Bin Boundaries

Before any activity, it’s important to set your boundaries. Think about this ahead of time and choose a boundary that you are comfortable with – as in, SOME ‘mud’ WILL get spilled, it’s inevitable. So, know that… but set a clear boundary for your kids to be mindful about keeping their hands inside the bin AND most importantly, not INTENTIONALLY throwing or dripping mud all over the floor/table, etc.

Set the boundary, remind them of the boundary from time to time, and if the boundary is crossed, end the activity. This might look like: “The mud stays in the bin. Whoops, it looks like some spilled, let’s keep it in the bin now. The mud is not to be thrown, the activity will end if mud is thrown again. OK, bye bye muddy pets, we will try again another time, it’s time to clean up. Let’s go wash our hands.”

My kids (2 + 4.5) LOVED this muddy pet bin. They played with it for well over an hour and afterward, we took a bath ourselves. A double activity in my book and an entire afternoon filled up!

Feed the Pets Sensory Bin

The second sensory bin that we created was a Feed the Pets Sensory Bin. This one was genius in it’s simplicity. The kids were entertained forever with this – and I would just cover it overnight and offer it again each day to get the most use out of it.

Sensory Bin Supplies

• Pet Stuffies
• Other Toys from our Pet Care Toys
• Stacking Cups
• Scoops
• Wooden Chunky Puzzle Pets
• Plastic Pets
• Cocoa Puffs Cereal

Sensory Bin Instructions:

1. Pour some Cocoa Puffs dry cereal into a sensory bin so that it is just covering the bottom of the bin. I used less than half a box (it was a big box though).
2. Add in some scoops, cups, and pets.
3. Using the stacking cups as pet bowls, demonstrate scooping up cereal to fill the pet bowls to feed the pets.
4. Extension: if you wanted to add some learning elements, you could call out numbers or use dice to roll numbers and have them count out that number of cereal pieces in each bowl. You could even have them use kid tweezers to do this for extra fine motor skills.

Pet Themed Learning Activity

Pet Cages and a Scavenger Hunt

A fun hands-on learning activity that we did was create pet cages with Lincoln Logs. We created all sorts of sizes and types of cages for our plastic pets to live in.

Once the activity ran its course, I extended it by creating a little scavenger hunt. I labeled the pets 1-10 with sticky notes and the cages 1-10, too.

I then hid the labeled pets and said that the pets had escaped their cages and must be brought back to the correct cage to go to bed. They then had to search for the pets and match the corresponding number on each post it note pet and cage.

Extension: You could do any set of numbers OR letters for this activity.

Pet Themed Independent Work

For ‘busy’ work or independent work, I like to include things like coloring sheets, do a dot pages, water wow books, etc. Basically, things that do not require my help and are relatively not messy.

You can keep it interesting by using different types of art supplies: markers, crayons, do a dot, paint sticks, etc. For do a dot pages, you can use dot stickers OR do a dot markers.

For our pet themed week, I used the coloring pages and color by number linked below as well as a pet themed water wow book that I had already in our homeschool closet.

Animal Coloring Pages by Homemade-Gifts-Made-Easy.com (including dog color by number)

Animal Do-A-Dot by ActiveLittles.com

Pet Themed Free Printables

I always include a handful of free printables that I’ll laminate and use all week.

Some freebies that I tend to search for: pattern block mats, play dough mats, and worksheets.

Other freebies that I like to include are any that fit skills we are currently working on. My 2 year old is working on color recognition, so I always search for color matching games. My 4.5 year old is working on beginning letter sounds, so I include games for that skill as well.

Here are the free printables that we used for our Pet Themed Preschool Activity Week:

Pet Themed Play Dough Shape Mats by FantasticFunandLearning.com

Pattern Block Mats by PreKinders.com

Dog & House Beginning Sounds Activity by ABCsOfLiteracy.com

Goldfish Counting Bowls by 123Homeschool4Me.com

Pet Count and Clip Cards by PreschoolInspirations.com

Pet Rhymes Activity by NoTimeForFlashcards.com

Dog House Color Matching by FromABCstoACTs.com

Cat Theme Shape Tracing by TotSchooling.net

Pet Themed Picture Books

We discovered SO many favorite picture books within our pet theme that I’m so excited to share with you! You should be able to find most of these titles at your local library, but I will link them to Amazon if you’re interested in purchasing any titles.

These were all so good, but if we had to pick our top favorites, that would be: James’ Reading Rescue, What Pet Should I Get?, Can I Be Your Dog?, Alfie, Not That Pet!, and What Pet to Get?.

James’ Reading Rescue – Dianna Wilson-Sirkovsky

National Geographic Kids Little Kids First Big Book of Pets – Catherine D. Hughes

May I Pet Your Dog? – Stephanie Calmenson

What Pet Should I Get? – Dr. Seuss

Just Me and My Puppy – Mercer Mayer

National Geographic Kids Everything Pets – James Spears

Tails Are Not for Pulling – Elizabeth Verdick

The Night Before the New Pet – Natasha Wing

National Geographic Kids Look & Learn Pets

Can I Be Your Dog? – Troy Cummings

Pete the Cat: A Pet for Pete – James Dean

Strictly No Elephants – Lisa Mantchev

Alfie – Thyra Heder

Not That Pet! – Smriti Halls

Oh, The Pets You Can Get! – Tish Rabe

I Wanna Iguana – Karen Kaufman Orloff

My Pet Wants a Pet – Elise Broach

*link not available on Amazon*

Some Pets – Angela Diterlizzi

What Pet to Get? – Emma Dodd

*link not available on Amazon*

Wrap it Up

Well, that’s it! That’s our preschool at home pet week. I hope your family will enjoy these activities and learning about pets as much as we did.

If you’re searching for your next theme, check our our Farm Themed Preschool Activities next!