Animal Tracing Pictures: Find the 5 Hidden Animals

This page shows a busy forest in autumn. Big trees spread their crowns across the page, leaves are scattered over the branches and the ground, mushrooms and a flower grow along a winding path, and grass covers the forest floor. All of this is drawn in solid black lines. Hidden in the forest are five animals drawn in dashes: an owl in a tree, a squirrel in the leaves, a fox beside the path, a rabbit by the flower and a mouse near the mushrooms.

First the child has to find the animals. That means looking carefully through a busy picture and telling the dashed lines apart from the solid ones, a skill called figure-ground perception that also helps children pick out letters on a crowded page. Each animal has a little clear space around it, so once it is found it can be traced without bumping into other lines. The instruction says there are five, and there are exactly five, so the child knows when the search is complete. Count them together at the end.

This printable PDF suits first grade and is a great autumn activity, though the forest works in any season. After tracing, the solid forest and the dashed animals make a detailed picture to color. For counting with tracing at kindergarten level, try the ducks on the pond. Picture tracing follows the outline of whole pictures; abstract line practice, step-by-step drawing and numbered dot-to-dot have their own pages.