Alphabetizing Animals

A great way to strengthen your kindergarten students' command of the alphabet is through simple alphabetizing exercises. This activity, found at Local School Directory, offers a perfect introductory activity. Your students will love working with the animal cards and they'll be certain to brush up on their ABCs!

Activity Overview

1. Provide students with a set of cards featuring the picture of a different animal on each. The lesson plan creator suggests the following animals - giraffe, bee, fish, dog, elephant, ant, and cat. [NOTE: Don't give them too many or they may feel overwhelmed. This lesson introduces the concept using the first seven letters of the alphabet. Continue with groups of seven until all the letters of the alphabet have been used, then consider extending the exercise to include more letters or letters that do not sit side by side in the alphabet.]
2. Invite your students to place the animal cards in order alphabetically based on the letter their name starts with.
3. Consider laminating the animal cards and, once students are finished ordering them, provide dry erase crayons to use in tracing the animal names on the cards for some writing practice.

Animal Cards

We couldn't find the actual activity worksheet for this lesson so you'll have to make your own animal cards (like the example pictured above) or find other pre-made animal worksheets online like these:

Farm Animal Printables from Scintro

Animal Cards from Homeschool Creations*

[*All you have to do is click the link for the Gingerbread Baby Preschool Pack on her site and print the correct pages. While they were created for a separate activity (one you might want to try!) and they don't follow the suggested animals, they would certainly be useful all the same!]