Animal food matching game
How to play the animal food matching game
The game is very straightforward, all you need to do is print the PDF pages and cut out the cards. Once this is done hand sets out to your students individually or let them work in small groups or pairs.
The cards are color-coded in that the animal cards have a blue border and their corresponding prey or diet cards have a brown border. Note that this isn’t very noticeable if you print the animal food matching game in grayscale.
The game can lead to a bit of debate as several animals can eat different things. for example, a cat could well be said to eat fish not drink milk a spider could also eat a dragonfly, not just a fly. Mice don’t eat cheese in the wild but it’s a stereotype that all students will understand.
It makes the activity into a slightly challenging puzzle to get the 48 cards all matched correctly. In this case, just use some of the cards if it is just too hard for your students.
Getting more out of the game
Aside from learning new vocabulary, the animal food matching game offers the perfect chance to practice speaking and creating sentences.
You can start out with “A shark eats fish” or “Sharks eat fish” Next follow up with further questions such as “What else does a shark it?” Where does it live? and whatever other language you deem suitable.
You also try to see if your class can create small food chains and explain them.
Related activities
There are quite a few other matching games that involve animals here on ESL Vault. For example, have a look at the animal tracks matching game, the animals and their homes pictures, as well as the animal skin matching game.
