Domestic vs. Wild Animals Sorting Worksheet for Preschoolers

How to use this worksheet

Have your child cut out the animal pictures at the bottom of the page and set them in a loose pile. Look at the two labeled boxes together, Domestic Animals and Wild Animals, and talk about what each category means using an example your child already knows. Ask your child to pick up one animal at a time, decide which category it belongs to, and glue it into the correct box. Continue until every animal has been sorted, then review both groups together and talk about why each animal was placed where it was.

Materials needed

• Scissors
• Glue
• Pencil

Extension activities

• •Visit a farm or petting zoo to see domestic animals up close and compare them to pictures of wild animals.
• •Sort toy animals at home into domestic and wild piles using the same categories.
• •Draw and label one new domestic animal and one new wild animal not shown on the worksheet.
• •Read a book that features both wild and domestic animals and pause to sort the characters as you go.
• •Talk about what domestic animals need from people, like food and shelter, compared to how wild animals survive on their own.

Tips for parents and teachers

If your child sorts an animal incorrectly, ask them where they think that animal usually lives, since talking through the reasoning helps more than a quick correction. Some animals can be tricky to categorize, like farm animals that also exist in the wild in some parts of the world, so it's fine to acknowledge that nuance in simple terms. Connecting the categories to animals your child has actually seen, whether pets at home or animals at a zoo, makes the sorting rule easier to grasp.