Fingerprint Animal Craft Activity

Capture your preschooler’s little fingerprints with this adorable fingerprint animal craft.

This activity is both fun and educational!

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Why You Should Do Fingerprint Art

Fingerprint animals are a great way to entice your preschooler to get her hands dirty.

Encouraging your preschooler to pick her favorite animals will help her to eagerly engage in this sensory activity.

While making this fingerprint animal craft, your preschooler will be strengthening her fine motor skills.

Strong fine motor skills transfer over to being able to write, tie shoes, zip up zippers, and so much more!

When colors are mixed while painting or making fingerprint art, your preschooler is figuring out how a new color is made.

This helps your preschooler to learn color theory.

This not only happens with paint but also with ink pads.

Making fingerprint animals with more than one color, like butterflies or ladybugs, will help your little one be able to see the colors mixing when the fingerprints that are next to each other overlap at the edges.

Seeing this may make your preschooler want to put two fingerprints on top of each other to see what color will be made.

If you do this, baby wipes will be your best friend to help keep your ink pads clean!

Your preschooler will also be able to use her creativity to come up with how to make the animals of her choosing.

Reasoning based on size will happen while figuring out which finger to use for the neck of the giraffe or for the head of the ladybug.

Allowing your preschooler to choose the spot on the paper for the fingerprint animal will help your preschooler learn spatial reasoning.

If you are looking for more things to do with your preschooler, check out the rest of the activities in our Homeschooling Preschool Curriculum.

This activity is part of the Little Detectives week which is Week 36b.

Items needed

ink pad
cardstock
markers
wipes — not needed but definitely recommended

How to make Fingerprint Animals

Brainstorm animal ideas with your preschooler.
Have your preschooler decide which finger should be used for the body and how to make the head. Most animals can be made with a thumbprint for the body and a fingertip for the head. You can use the side of the pinky finger for legs (or draw them on later).
After choosing an animal and the part of the body to start with, take the stamp pad and roll the preschooler’s finger in it a few times. Make sure that the fingertip is coded.
Put the finger down on the paper and press the finger. This will help to make sure that the fingerprint stamp is on the page.
Talk with your preschooler about which body part should be next completed.
If you are changing colors and want your ink pad to say clean, wipe off the finger that was used. Some color mixing on the paper will happen when your preschooler puts down her finger next to the first stamp.
Repeat steps 3-6 until the fingerprint animal is complete.
Choose another insect or animal and go through the steps again.
Once the stamps are dry, use markers to add in final details like eyes, mouths, and patterns.