Ice age animals for kids

What's here

Twelve giants from the frozen chapter after the dinosaurs: a shaggy elephant, a deer with antlers wider than a door, a tiger with banana-sized teeth, and an armadillo the size of a car. Tap one and it trumpets, howls, gnaws, or rolls, then shares a fact that's the real deal. These animals actually walked the same ground we do, just a lot colder and a lot longer ago.

For toddlers who've worn out the dinosaurs, this is the sequel: same huge, same extinct, all new fur.

Meet these first

• Woolly Mammoth. A giant elephant in a shaggy coat with huge curved tusks. The main character of the ice age.
• Saber-Tooth Tiger. Two long pointy teeth as big as bananas. Hold up two bananas for scale. Instant hit.
• Woolly Rhino. A thick furry coat and a big horn it used for brushing snow aside, like a built-in snow shovel.
• Glyptodon. As big as a car, with a hard round shell like a giant armadillo. A boulder with a face.
• Giant Ground Sloth. As tall as a tree, and it stood up to reach the highest leaves. The regular sloth's very ambitious grandpa.
• Irish Elk. The biggest antlers ever, wider than a door. Measure a real door together and be amazed.
• Giant Beaver. As big as a bear, with long teeth for gnawing on trees. Ordinary beaver, cranked to maximum.
• Dire Wolf. A big strong wolf that hunted in a pack with its friends. Everything's easier with friends.

The cave bear that slept all winter, the mastodon that dug up plants with its tusks, and the fast-running terror bird finish the lineup. And a small confession: the dodo lived on a warm island long, long after the ice age. It's here because everyone deserves to meet a dodo.

How to play (60 seconds)

Play the size game. Everything here is "as big as" something: a car, a door, a banana, a tree. Say the comparison, then find the real object and gasp appropriately. Then stomp across the room like a mammoth, counting stomps out loud. Big animals invite big movements, and big movements pull out big words.

Good to know

Comparison words like big, bigger, and biggest are workhorse vocabulary, and this hub is one long excuse to use them. Anchoring sizes to real objects your toddler can touch turns an abstract word into one they own.

Keep exploring

The free first-words cards and 50-word checklist are on the printables page for the paper-and-crayon crowd.

Dinosaurs is the prequel, obviously. Arctic animals shows who handles the deep cold today, and zoo animals has the elephant, the modern mammoth in a lighter jacket. The full roster is on the homepage.