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Hidden Animals Puzzle by Frank Tapson

Today I’m excited to share this Hidden Animals Puzzle with you from Frank Tapson.

hidden animals puzzle

This year, I am teaching 4 sections of Algebra 2 and 2 sections of Pre-Calculus. Having four sections of one subject is always interesting because I find that keeping four different classes at approximately the same spot in the curriculum to be very challenging. One class is always finishing earlier than the others, requiring creative and quick thinking on my part.

A great resource I have found for engaging early finishers or engaging students on those days when so many students are gone that moving forward with the curriculum is impossible is Frank Tapson’s Teacher Resources on Line website. Today’s resource I’m sharing comes from his collection of Some Other Lessons.

If you recognize Frank Tapson’s name on my blog, it’s for good reason. He is responsible for creating How Far Can You Climb?, Manifest Game, Skittles Game, Cover Up Game, and the Horizontal Number Line Poster I use in my classroom. 

Recently, the hidden animals puzzle from this file caught my eye. Perhaps because it’s directly after How Far Can You Climb? which is always a student favorite. There’s absolutely zero math involved in these tiny puzzlers, but they do make the perfect time filler! You could even post one a day as part of a bell ringer or opening activity.

I didn’t really want to print off the entire page of 30 hidden animal puzzles and give them to my students as a formal assignment, so I decided to put them into a more useful format for just tossing up a few of the puzzles at a time as time permitted. I finally settled on creating a Google Slide presentation.

Hidden Animals Puzzle by Frank Tapson

Can you find the hidden animals in the sentences below?

Hidden Animals Puzzle by Frank Tapson
Hidden Animals Puzzle by Frank Tapson

Instead of keeping the file to myself, I thought I should share it here on my blog. All credit goes to Frank Tapson for his original awesome resource. All I have done is turned the worksheet into a Google Slide Presentation/PDF for easier presenting.

My students have really enjoyed the hidden animals puzzle the few times I’ve pulled it out with some extra time at the end of class. The hardest thing to balance is giving students enough time to find the hidden animal and moving on at a decent pace so the students who have already found it don’t get bored.

Free Download of Hidden Animals Puzzle by Frank Tapson

You can find the Google Slides here. PDF Download is below.


Hidden Animals Puzzle by Frank Tapson (PDF) (2326 downloads )

Now, I just want to find a way to do this with hidden math terms!

Puzzle Solutions

I intentionally do not make answers to the printable math puzzles I share on my blog available online because I strive to provide learning experiences for my students that are non-google-able. I would like other teachers to be able to use these puzzles in their classrooms as well without the solutions being easily found on the Internet.

However, I do recognize that us teachers are busy people and sometimes need to quickly reference an answer key to see if a student has solved a puzzle correctly or to see if they have interpreted the instructions properly.

If you are a teacher who is using these puzzles in your classroom, please send me an email at sarah@mathequalslove.net with information about what you teach and where you teach. I will be happy to forward an answer key to you.

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Wednesday 6th of February 2019

Is there an answer key?

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