Australian animals

What animals look like and where they live (My animal friends cards). Little Roos has 15 free games, tours and things to make that practise it, for ages 2-7.

Where it fits

In the Early Years Learning Framework V2.0 (birth to five) and the Australian Curriculum v9 (Foundation to Year 2), with the official wording:

• AC9SFU01 (Australian Curriculum v9: Science, Foundation): observe external features of plants and animals and describe ways they can be grouped based on these features.
• AC9S1U01 (Australian Curriculum v9: Science, Year 1): identify the basic needs of plants and animals, including air, water, food or shelter, and describe how the places they live meet those needs.

Games that practise it

• Frog's Big Change: Life cycles: put the stages in order, from egg to frog and egg to butterfly. Ages 4-7.
• Dugong Remembers: Remembering things in order: watch and listen, then do it back. Ages 3-6.
• Syllable Stomp: Hearing the beats in a word: how many stomps in koala?. Ages 3-6.
• Dig It Up!: What fossils are: bones, teeth, shells, plants and footprints from long ago that turned to rock. Ages 2-5.
• Bone by Bone: Putting steps in order, the way a museum builds a skeleton: a Muttaburrasaurus and a Diprotodon. Ages 4-7.
• Long Ago or Today?: Sorting animals we know from fossils and animals alive today. Ages 3-6.
• Footprint Detectives: Reading footprints, today and long ago: three toes, two feet, round paws. Ages 3-6.
• Fly Around Australia: Australia's very different places, on a map: a big city, the Snowy Mountains, the red centre's deserts, the rainforest and the Reef. Ages 4-7.
• Homes, Homes, Homes: Homes are different, and they're all homes: city, farm, river, outback, beach, and animal homes too. Ages 3-6.
• The Whale Highway: The humpback whales' journey up and down Australia's east coast: north to warm water in winter, where their calves are born, and home to Antarctica in spring. Ages 3-7.
• Who Lives Where?: Sorting Australian sea animals by where they live: the Great Barrier Reef, the open sea, the mangroves and the kelp forests of the south. Ages 3-7.
• Turtle Hatchlings: Numbers to 10 and then 20, and counting on, as a baby green turtle scuttles down a Great Barrier Reef beach to the sea. Ages 4-7.
• Reef Hide and Seek: Looking and finding, for the youngest: who's hiding on the reef, in the kelp and in the seagrass?. Ages 2-4.
• The Nature Walk: Something to make.
• Weather and Seasons: Something to make.

Away from the screen

About two minutes each, with things most homes have.

Watch something grow (from Frog's Big Change)

1. Look for tadpoles in a pond or a creek (look, don't take them), or for a caterpillar on a leaf in the garden.
2. Go back each week and see what's changed. Draw what you see.
3. Talk about what comes next: what will the tadpole grow first? What will the caterpillar turn into?

What's in the bag? (from Dugong Remembers)

1. Put three things from around the house in a line: a spoon, a sock, a toy.
2. Name them in order together, then cover them with a tea towel.
3. Can your child say them back in the same order? Swap, and let them test you. Add a fourth when three is easy.

Things to ask while they play

• What does a tadpole grow first, its back legs or its front legs?
• Where does a butterfly lay her eggs?
• Which one came first?
• What came after the octopus?

More skills in The world around us, or every skill.

Updated 12 October 2026