Farm and zoo animals: videos for toddlers and preschoolers
"What does the cow say?" It's one of the first games you play with a toddler, and it stays fun for a long time. Animals are one of the easiest ways into new words for young children: they have a name, a sound, and often you can go and see them for real.
We looked at what KidsTube has about farm and zoo animals. This is what we found.
Animal sounds for the youngest
Animal Videos for Kids has more about animals than anything else in the catalog: songs about farm, zoo and wild animal sounds, and guessing games where your child hears a sound and works out which animal it is.
For songs, there's plenty to choose from:
- Super Simple Songs has Old MacDonald Had A Farm, Animal Sounds Songs and Let's Go To The Zoo.
- HooplaKidz has its own Old MacDonald and an animal sounds collection.
- ABCkidTV has an Animal Sounds Song and Old MacDonald too.
A trip to the zoo
- Sesame Street has Elmo at the Zoo, an hour of animal clips, and a collection where Elmo learns about animals.
- Caillou has Caillou Goes to the Zoo, a gentle episode about a day out that a lot of children will recognise.
- Nat Geo Kids has short clips of real baby zoo animals, and a compilation of animals at the vet, farm animals included.
For preschoolers
Fun Learning has an animal sounds song, and a Number Zoo series that mixes animals with numbers, letters and telling the time. Good for a child who knows the animals already and is ready for something new alongside them.
Search for more
To find more, search for animal sounds, farm or zoo. The search looks at video titles, so what turns up depends on what the creator called their video.
From the screen to the real animal
The best thing about animal videos is that you can go and find the animals afterwards. A few ideas:
- Make the sound together. With a toddler that's plenty: you say "cow", they say "moo". Later you swap round.
- Find the animal in a book you have at home. Recognising the same animal somewhere else is a real step.
- Go and look. A city farm or petting zoo nearby is often free and small enough for short legs. The goat your child just saw on screen is a lot more impressive in real life.
- Ask what they saw. "Which animal did you like best?" is a good question after a video, and the answer is often a surprise.
Have fun with all the animals, big and small!