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Looking for fun, easy crafts for your toddler or preschooler? Check out these paper farm animals! Great for little ones to get creative and learn about farm animals. If you want, you can also use this time to tell them a little about the role of pets in our lives or to try out the sounds of farm animals.
This easy paper animal craft uses basic materials and can be fun for kids of all ages.
For parents, if you’re looking for a way to introduce farm animals while singing the nursery rhyme “Old MacDonald Had Farm” at home with your toddler or preschooler, or if you’re just looking for cute paper crafts to keep your child busy, this is for you!
We included instructions for making a cow, horse, pig, chicken, and sheep. You will find detailed instructions below. Please note that scissors will be used for this activity, and assistance from adults is required.
Art Materials
Below are the tools you need. Of course, you can exchange, for example, acrylic paint with watercolors for children or with colored paper. The pen can be changed to crayons.
Drawing eyes can be difficult for a small child, and you can use googly eyes instead and let your child stick them to a paper plate with a glue stick. Additionally, you can use horsehair yarn instead of paper. The possibilities are endless and mostly depend on your child’s interest. With my daughter, I would add yarn, glitter, and more. With both of my boys, getting them to do crafts was a challenge, and I had to keep it simple!
Equipment:
- Sheets of Paper
- Black Paper
- Pens or crayons
- Scissors
- Acrylic Paint (or watercolor)
- Makeup Brush
- (Maybe googly eyes and a glue stick)
Step-by-step instructions
The Eyes of Farming Animals
Let’s first make the eyes of a farm animal by tracing, cutting, and coloring a blank sheet of paper. The same type of eyes can be used on all animals, so make them two two if you are planning to do all the farm crafts with your child. (If you want to use googly eyes instead of paper eyes, you can skip this step.)
Step 1. Fold the white paper lengthwise in half.
Step 2. Track any circuits you have in your home.
Step 3. Cut out the shape of the circle using scissors.
Step 4: Draw the eyes and use a marker or crayons to cut them out.
Paper Plate Sheep
The first animal on the farm is the sheep. Bye, bye! 🙂
Step 1: Fill a plate with black paper. It will be like a sheep’s face.
Step 2: Trace and cut out the sides of the sheep’s face.
You will need ears, a nose, cheeks, and a mouth. I also made the fur for the head out of paper, but you can also have your child glue cotton balls or yarn as fur.
Draw the cloud shape of the “hair” of the paper sheep. The size should be suitable for use as bangs on the sheep’s face (paper plate).
Cut out the shape using scissors.
For the sheep’s ears, cut out an oblong shape from white paper and paint it black, for example, with a pen or acrylic paint. You can also use dark colored paper.
Cut out three small shapes that will be like the nose and the blush.
Step 3: Assemble the parts of the sheep’s face.
Place the lamb face sides on a paper plate. Fill in the happy mouth in white or red unless you cut out a small mouth in the previous step.
Ready! Now move on to the next farm animal – the cow (you can also use black paint for this one, so it’s useful to make sheep and cows at the same time).
Paper Plate Cow
Step 1: Trace the cow pattern onto the paper using a pen or crayon, and trace the black pattern with paint, crayons, or a marker.
2: Trace and cut out the sides of the paper sheep’s face. You will need ears, horns, and a nose.
Cut a yellow paper with a half round shape for the horns and the ears from the white paper.
Cut a circle smaller than the shape of the mouth and use a marker to draw the nose and mouth.
3: Assemble the paper cow face.
Use glue to attach the cow’s face.
And here you have the ultimate cow art!
Paper Plate Pig
Now, let’s make a pig. The project is simple and only has a few steps, so if you have a toddler, you may want to start with this farm animal. It can also help make it beautiful!
1: Draw a pink plate on the pig’s face.
2: Trace and cut out the parts of the paper pig’s face. You will need a nose and ears.
Paint the ears the same pink as the face, or use the same paper as the nose.
Step 3. Assemble the parts of the paper pig’s face. Use glue to attach the pig’s face.
Step 4. To finish, draw a smiling mouth.
And here is the finished pig!
Paper Plate Chicken
Now, the second to last meat is chicken. Here, a little “forward” (for the child) cutting is required if you use paper for the face and wings. You can, of course, use colored feathers on the wings. Other than that, this is a very simple task.
Step 1. Trace and cut out the sides of the paper chicken’s face. Spread the yellow paper on a piece of paper and cut out the darkest paper. make the sides in an uneven “feather-shape” like below.
Then, on the wings, fold the paper in half, follow, and cut like the picture below, so you make two equal wings.
Even if you don’t have it in the picture above, you can also take a pink or red paper and cut a triangle like a mouth. Or you just let your child draw one.
Step 3. Assemble the chicken, face and wings, and glue everything together. Draw a lip if you haven’t cut out the paper.
Ah and ready!
Paper Plate Horse
Now on to the final paper animal – the horse! I also made the mane out of paper, but you can use yarn or cotton.
Step 1. Fill a plate with brown paper. It will be like a horse’s face.
Step 2. Trace and cut out parts of the paper horse’s face – ears, mane, and nose. Let’s start with the ears.
After the ears, draw a circular outline of the paper horse and draw it using a pen, acrylic paint, watercolor, or crayons – it all depends on what you have and who will do the actual coloring (you, your little one, or an older child). You can also use yarn for mane instead of paper.
Finally, cut out a circular shape, and use markers or crayons to draw the nose and mouth. If you don’t have yellow or, for example, pink paper, use white paper and paint it.
Step 3. Once all the face pieces are made, put them back together on the paper to make the farm animal.
And you did it!
It was like that! I hope you (and your child!) find these easy kids activities fun to do.
For parents, you can use these farm animals even further, for example, by singing songs like the nursery rhyme “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” and using paper animals as toys. Or you can bring your toddler and the animals to the farm and zoo and look at real animals. Have fun!
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Paula Dennholt founded Easy Baby Life in 2006 and has been a parenting and pregnancy writer ever since. Her parenting and writing is based on studies in cognitive-behavioral and child support and her experiences as a mother and stepmother. Parental life has helped him realize the importance of putting relationships before the law. She strongly believes in proper parenting and a science-based approach.
Paula works with a group of pediatricians who help review and write stories.