Things to do
Do you have any bright ideas for things to do for World Animal Day? If so, send them to us by clicking here.
You can have a look at bright ideas sent in so far by clicking here.
Why not do something special this year for World Animal Day? Here are a few ideas to get you started.
Ideas for animals
Do something nice for your pet. Take your dog out for an extra-long walk with plenty of ball-throwing or buy a present for your cat.
Collect cardboard tubes, such as the inner tubes from kitchen towel. Your hamster, gerbil or mouse will love running through them if you put them in his cage.
Make a toy mouse for your cat. Here’s what to do.
What you need
Felt; scissors; a circular object, such as a glass; pencil; scissors; needle and thread; string; a handful of dried catnip (available from pet shops); felt-tipped pens.
What to do
- Place the glass on the felt and lightly draw round it in pencil.
- Carefully cut along the pencil line so that you have a circle of felt.
- Fold the circle in half and sew the edges together, leaving a gap of about 2cm at one end.
- Fill the felt shape with catnip.
- Cut a piece of string about 7cm in length and slip the end into the gap.
- Sew up the gap, making sure that the string is fixed firmly in place.
- Cut out felt ears and sew them in place. You can also draw on eyes with felt-tipped pen.
- Give the mouse to your cat and watch her play!
Illustration by Kate Kibble
Decorate a bowl for your dog or cat. Here’s what to do.
What you need
Newspaper; pencil and scrap paper; a plain china bowl (available from pet shops or supermarkets); china paint pens (available from craft shops); an oven; baking sheet; oven gloves.
What to do
- Cover your work surface with newspaper.
- On scrap paper, sketch out a rough design of how you want your finished bowl to look. You might want to write your pet’s name and draw pawmarks around it, make a pattern of bones for a dog and fish for a cat, or write on words such as ‘Woof!’ or ‘Miaow!’.
- Draw your design on the china bowl.
- Leave the bowl to dry overnight.
- Ask an adult to pre-heat the oven, put the bowl on a baking sheet and bake it according to the instructions on the pens.
- Put on oven gloves to remove the bowl from the oven, and leave it to cool before filling it with yummy pet food for your animal.
Ideas for wildlife
Give the wild birds in your garden a treat and make a bird cake for them. Here’s what to do.
What you need
Ingredients: lard or suet; unsalted peanuts; dried fruit; grated cheese; bird seed. Equipment: a disposable plastic cup; skewer; 30cm string; saucepan; spoon; scissors.
What to do
- Ask an adult to help you make a hole in the bottom of the yoghurt pot with a skewer – take care with this bit!
- Tie a knot in the end of the string, then thread it through the hole so that the cup can dangle upright when you hold the long end of the string.
- Ask an adult to help you soften the lard or suet in a saucepan over a low heat.
- Stir in the other ingredients until you have a thick stiff mixture. You will probably need about twice the weight of dry ingredients as fat.
- Spoon the mixture into the cup, pressing it down firmly with the back of the spoon until the cup is full and making sure that the string is sticking out.
- Leave the cup until the mixture has cooled and gone solid, then carefully cut away the rim of the cup with scissors, exposing some of the bird cake.
- Hang the bird cake up in your garden from the branch of a tree or from a hanging basket hook.
- The birds will soon notice the cake and come to eat it. You may need to cut away a little more of the plastic every few days so that the birds can reach it.
Illustration by Kate Kibble
Another treat for the wild birds would be to thread pieces of o-shaped breakfast cereal onto loops of string and hang them up in your
garden (well out of the way of cats!). Or you could carefully use a needle and thread to make strings of peanuts in their shells.
You may well find that squirrels enjoy these treats as well!
Illustration by Kate Kibble
Did you know that earthworms are our friends and that they help gardeners by mixing up the soil? You can check this out by making a wormery. Put a layer of garden soil in a large glass jar, followed by layers of similar material, such as damp sand, potting compost, wood shavings, grass cuttings, and earth from someone else’s garden, alternating each layer with a layer of your own garden soil. Sprinkle a few leaves on top.
Carefully collect three or four worms from the garden and put them in the jar. Wrap black paper around the jar and hold it in place with an elastic band – worms like the dark! Keep the jar in a cool dark place. Check every day to make sure that the soil remains damp, but not soggy, and remember to add a bit of worm food, such as chopped up potato peelings or leaves. Peel back the paper and take a quick peep every day to see what your worms are up to. You should soon see how they busily mix up the soil. After a couple of weeks, return your worms to the garden.
You can’t find any worms for your wormery? Try your hand at a spot of worm-charming! Use a couple of large spoons, toy spades or similar to hit the ground as if you were playing the drums. The worms will think it’s raining and come up to the surface. Be careful not to hit any of them, though!
If you have a garden, ask if you can have a corner of it to make wildlife-friendly. You can plant lavender and lemon balm for bees, and sedum for butterflies, and have a patch of stinging nettles (yes, really!) where butterflies can lay their eggs. With a bit of adult help, you might even be able to build a pond for frogs and dragonflies. Old logs make good hiding places for creepy crawlies and large stones are handy for thrushes to break open snail shells. If you work on your garden now it should be well established for butterflies and other creatures in the spring.
Ideas for you
Make a paper plate cat mask for yourself or for a younger brother or sister. Draw on the animal’s face with felt-tipped pen. Carefully cut out eye-holes – you might need to ask an adult for help with this bit! Glue on whiskers made from string. Use a hole punch to make holes at either side and thread through string to tie the mask in place.
Make a greetings card to wish a friend or someone in your family a Happy World Animal Day. Fold a piece of thick white paper in half and decorate it with something connected with animals. You could just draw a picture of your own pet, or you might like to try one of these ideas:
- Trace an outline of an animal picture lightly onto your card, then carefully go over the outline with a glue pen. While the glue is still tacky, press coloured string along the outline. Or you could draw your animal with glue pen, then sprinkle glitter over it to make a magical sparkly animal picture.
- Tear up pages from an old comic and make an animal collage.
- Make potato print pawmarks.
- Make animal shapes using fingerprints in coloured paint. Use pen to draw on features.
Make a toy aquarium for your bedroom. Here’s what to do.
What you need
A large shoe box; paint and brushes; coloured paper; scissors; glitter pen; needle; thread; pale blue cellophane; ruler; glue; sticky tape; scraps of green fabric; large pebbles; sticky-backed paper.
What to do
- Paint the inside of your shoebox pale blue.
- While the paint is drying, draw a variety of fish shapes onto coloured paper and cut them out. Draw on scales, fins and eyes with glitter pen.
- Use a needle to make a tiny hole in the top of each fish shape and thread through a piece of cotton. Use a different length of thread for each fish.
- Cut a rectangle of blue cellophane so that it is about 4 or 5cm long and wider than the box. Then put this aside for the moment.
- At this point you will need to decide which side of the box is going to be the top of your aquarium! Decorate the other three sides of the inside of your shoebox with pictures of rocks and waterweed. You can either paint these on or cut them out of coloured paper and stick them on. It will look better if these don’t go all the way up the sides, so leave some of the blue painted area showing at the top.
- Use pieces of sticky tape to fasten the pieces of thread to the inside of the roof of your aquarium so that the fishes dangle down.
- You could also attach some thin pieces of green fabric to the inside roof of your aquarium to look like drifting waterweed.
- Put some large pebbles inside your aquarium.
- Carefully turn the box so the open side is uppermost. (The pebbles, fish and weed will all fall to the back of the box, but if you are very gentle this won’t matter.) Stretch the cellophane over the open edge and secure it with sticky tape.
- You can put the finishing touches to your aquarium by covering the outside of the box with sticky paper, covering up where you have stuck down the cellophane.
- Now turn your aquarium upright again and shake it gently to get the pebbles to cover the floor evenly.
Illustration by Kate Kibble
Make your World Animal Day teatime special by asking if you can decorate a cake. A plain iced cake would be best, then you can draw on animal pictures with coloured icing pens or make outline animal faces with small sweets or dried fruit.
Do you have a favourite photo of your pet? Why not buy a simple wooden or plastic photo frame (you can get these very cheaply), then decorate it with glitter glue, shells, sequins, or anything else you think will look cool. Then use it to display your photo of your animal friend.
Why not adopt a lion!? You can't really keep a lion in your back garden, but many animal charities run adoption schemes where you can sponsor a lion, tiger, wolf, and practically any creature you can think of. You will pay a small annual fee and in return get photos and regular updates about your animal's progress. Check out organisations such as the Born Free Foundation and WWF.
Illustration by Kate Kibble
Sign the pledge board to tell the world what you are going to do for World Animal Day and to say how much you love animals!
After World Animal Day, don't forget to send us details and pics of what you did for the day so we can include them on the website. You can email us by clicking here.
