Perspective Taking With an Animal

For this activity, you will want to either observe an animal in your day-to-day life (e.g. pet or birds or squirrels or worms or other animals outside) or you can imagine an animal you saw in the past (maybe even at the Minnesota Zoo!) or look for videos or pictures of a favorite animal.

Once you have that animal in mind, think about a few things:

1. What is the animal’s name? If it does not have a name, come up with a name for it.
2. Draw a picture of the animal or make a list about some of the characteristics that describe that animal.
3. Now, come up with a story to describe a day in the life of that animal. Try to focus on how the animal feels during the day, and why it feels that way. You can write your story on the same paper as your drawing or your list, or on another piece of paper, or you can share your story out loud with someone.
4. What did you learn about how your animal feels during the day?
5. Would you want to be this animal for a day? Why or why not?

You can do this exercise again with another animal, or think about a week or a month in the life of this animal. You can even make a puppet show or do a play pretending to be the animal! Have fun, be creative, and think outside the box.

The Minnesota Zoo would love to see examples of how you used this activity at home! Please share pictures or comments via email at [email protected], and take less than 5 minutes of time to provide us feedback by completing this short survey.