Animal Anagrams

Intro

Noils and giters and rabes, oh my! Can you unscramble those three?

Animal anagrams is a word game, where you rearrange the letters to reveal animal names. It’s lots of fun and encourages cognitive thinking, whether someone plays alone or in a group. Don’t let it become competitive, though, it’s really nice if people work together to find the right answer!

This fun activity is great as a standalone game, or incorporated into a special animal-themed event if playing with groups. You can make it harder or simpler, just by using shorter or longer words, and jumbling up the letters less or more.

*Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

What you need

A list of animals scrambled up - download resource
A flip chart, whiteboard or very large sheet of paper to pin to the wall

The Activity

If one person is playing alone, list all the anagrams on a sheet, attach it to a clipboard and give it to the person to do at their leisure
If you’re playing in a group:

Gather the group together in a room or area
Put the chart, whiteboard or large people paper where it can be clearly seen, or on the wall
Write the scrambled animal words on the board and ask the group to guess what they are
Give or act out a clue, if needed

Scrambled words can look quite obscure, so if you’re playing this with a group at exploratory level, adjust the anagrams like this:

Scramble up the words but keep the first and last letters the same and just scramble the middle letters. For example, rsqurlei (squirrel) can be written as srquierl – this should make it a little easier to find the answer

PDF Resource