Searching for an engaging, purposeful and low-prep tabletop activity that will provide your students with the opportunity to develop their fine motor skills? Our Feed the Zoo Animalsresource is just what you need!

To prepare this task, simply print the included templates and cut out. Attach the animal heads to the tops of open jars, fill a deep tray with allergy-safe animal ‘food’ (such as oats, popping corn, dyed rice or pasta) and provide scoops or spoons. Your students will love the challenge of flipping a card to see what which animal they need to feed, determining the number of scoops of food required and carefully pouring the food into their open mouth! Use this zoo animal-themed activity to help your students develop hand and wrist strength and other important skills, including spatial awareness, control and hand-eye coordination as they grasp the scoop, scoop the food, carefully move it to the animal and pour it into their mouth a set number of times. In addition, this task provides the opportunity for students to practise counting skills, including number recognition and one-to-one correspondence.

This hands-on resource includes detailed instructions with a list of required equipment, six zoo animal heads and 68 animal feeding cards (includes blank and numbered options). Alternatively, use our editable Animal Feeding Cards document to add your own numbers in a font of your choice or to add other cues, such as colours, words or pictures. We recommend printing all resources on thick card for longevity.

As students complete this activity, we recommend making observations of how they engage with and complete the task, as this will help you to assess their fine motor development. For example, do they show a preference for using one hand, are they able to control their hand movements to prevent spills, do they adjust their hand movements if they miss the target, are their movements smooth and controlled, and can they complete the task at a reasonable pace?

This engaging fine motor activity is a part of our Working at the Zoo: Fine Motor Skills Play Tray resource.