Random animal wheel

Which animals are on the wheel?

Sixty animals chosen so that a six-year-old could draw or act out most of them: big mammals from the savanna, woodland creatures, farm animals, birds, sea life, reptiles, insects and a few family pets. The mix is deliberate, so a game does not become ten spins of African mammals in a row. Every slice has the same chance of winning.

Animal charades

Charades is the game this wheel was made for. The actor spins privately (or turns the screen away), then acts out the animal with no sounds allowed. The first person to guess takes the next turn. Turn on Remove the winner after each spin so nobody gets the kangaroo twice. For a harder version, allow only one body part: act it out with just your hands, then just your face.

For team play, split the room with the random team generator and alternate actors, giving a point for each animal guessed inside 30 seconds.

Drawing prompts with a random animal

• One-minute sketch. Spin and draw the animal in 60 seconds. Speed hides a lot of mistakes and loosens up the hand.
• Mash-up creature. Spin twice and combine them: an octopus-giraffe, a penguin with bat wings.
• Colour twist. Spin an animal here and a colour on the random color wheel, then draw a purple hippo or a gold snail.
• Setting prompt. Add a place or an activity from the drawing prompt wheel, such as “a sloth at the beach”.

Animal of the day for classrooms

Spin one animal each morning and build a five-minute routine around it: where does it live, what does it eat, is it a mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian, fish or invertebrate, and one surprising fact the class looks up. Over a term, children end up with a sorted animal notebook. Pair it with the alphabet wheel for younger children and ask them to find the first letter of the animal’s name.

Sorting practice is another quick win: spin ten animals, then ask the class to group them by habitat or by what they eat. The results history holds all ten for you to copy onto the board.

How do I make a wheel of only farm or sea animals?

Open Edit as text, delete the lines you do not need and close the editor. Keeping cow, pig, sheep, goat, chicken, duck and horse gives you a farm wheel for toddlers; keeping the sea animals gives you an eight-slice ocean wheel. Add local wildlife the same way, one per line. Each slice keeps an equal chance, a point covered in the randomness guide.

About this list

We picked these 60 common English animal names ourselves for recognisability, not as a scientific classification. A few are group names rather than single species (bee, whale, shark, spider), which keeps them easy to draw and act out. “Ladybug” is the North American name; it is the same beetle as the British ladybird.