Rainforest animals for kids

What's here

Twelve animals from the loudest, greenest place on Earth: monkeys, a big cat, a rainbow parrot, and a sloth setting the pace for everyone else. Tap one and it swings, howls, slurps, or stretches, then shares a fact that's genuinely true. The rainforest is where nature keeps its show-offs, so this hub is heavy on animals that do something.

It's also the best hub in the app for volume games, because half these animals are famous for being loud and one is famous for barely moving.

Meet these first

• Sloth. Moves so slowly that green algae can grow right on its fur. The only animal that doubles as a garden.
• Howler Monkey. A call so loud you can hear it for miles through the jungle. Your toddler will want to test this. Choose your moment.
• Macaw. A big rainbow-colored parrot with a very loud squawk. Every color word, one bird.
• Jaguar. A strong spotted cat that actually loves to swim in rainforest rivers. Try telling a house cat that.
• Anteater. Slurps up thousands of ants a day with its long sticky tongue. Thousands. A day.
• Gibbon. Swings through the trees hand over hand on super long arms, the jungle's playground champion.
• Okapi. Looks like a horse with zebra-striped legs, and it's actually a cousin of the giraffe. Nobody guesses that.
• Poison Dart Frog. Wears super bright colors to say "please don't eat me," which is the politest warning in nature.

The rock-cracking capuchin monkey, the nest-building orangutan, the curly-tailed kinkajou, and the mud-loving tapir are waiting in the trees.

How to play (60 seconds)

Play loud and slow. Do the howler monkey howl together at full volume, once, then do everything sloth-speed: slow reach, slow stretch, sloooow words. Toddlers find deliberate slowness hilarious, and stretching a word out lets them hear every part of it. Finish on the macaw and name its colors one at a time, letting your toddler point before you say each one.

Good to know

Animal sounds are a bridge into talking, and this hub has dramatic ones: howl, squawk, slurp. A toddler who howls back is taking a turn in a conversation, and turn-taking is the skill under all of it. The words come after the turns.

Keep exploring

The free first-words cards and 50-word checklist are on the printables page for quieter practice than a howler monkey allows.

Zoo animals is where most kids meet this crew in person. Birds has more feathered color for macaw fans, bugs covers the anteater's entire menu, and nighttime animals has the ocelot's after-dark shift. The full map is on the homepage.