Australian Animals for Kids: Kangaroo, Koala, Wombat and Platypus

Seven animals found only in Australia: the kangaroo and its smaller cousin the wallaby, the koala, the wombat, the duck-billed platypus, the dingo, Australia's wild dog, and the emu, a giant bird that cannot fly. Most of them are marsupials, mammals whose babies grow in a pouch.

Kangaroo and platypus each fill a whole line of the 8x8 grid: kangaroo a row, read backwards, and platypus a column.

Australian Animals Vocabulary: 7 Words to Find

Words run across, up and down; 3 of the 7 read backwards. The longest words are Kangaroo and Platypus, with 8 letters each.

Dingo: Australia's wild dog, which arrived with people from Asia several thousand years ago.
Emu: A huge flightless bird of Australia, the second tallest bird in the world after the ostrich.
Kangaroo: A large Australian marsupial that hops on its powerful back legs and carries its baby, a joey, in a pouch.
Koala: An Australian marsupial that lives in eucalyptus trees and eats almost nothing but their leaves.
Platypus: An Australian mammal with a duck-like bill that lays eggs and finds food by sensing electricity in the water.
Wallaby: A small or medium-sized relative of the kangaroo.
Wombat: A stocky, burrowing Australian marsupial, famous for its cube-shaped droppings.

How to Solve the Australian Animals Word Search

"Kangaroo" fills a whole row, reading backwards, and "platypus" fills a whole column, running down. "Koala" and "wombat" are the only words that read normally across. "Emu" is only three letters: look for it last.

Australian Animal Activities for Kids

Find Australia on a world map and talk about why so many animals there live nowhere else.
Ask children which animals carry their babies in a pouch.
Draw a platypus and point out its duck bill, beaver tail and otter feet.