Animal Memory Match Cards

This animal matching game is a printable memory deck of 20 cartoon animals, two cards of each, for 40 cards in all. Shuffle, lay them face down, flip two at a time, and keep any pair you find.

The animals

The full set is bear, crocodile, elephant, fox, frog, giraffe, koala, lion, monkey, owl, panda, parrot, penguin, rabbit, raccoon, sloth, snake, tiger, turtle and zebra. The animals are round-faced and smiling, sitting or standing on a plain white card, so the whole animal is easy to see.

The 12-pair set keeps the elephant, fox, frog, giraffe, koala, lion, monkey, owl, panda, penguin, tiger and zebra. That’s 24 cards, which fits a small table and a shorter game. The how-to-play page says it plainly: fewer pairs for younger kids, more for a bigger challenge.

Picture cards or named cards

Each set comes in two versions. On the named cards, the animal’s name sits under the picture in capital letters, which gives early readers something to sound out when a pair turns up. The picture-only cards leave the words out, so children who can’t read yet play on the same terms as everyone else.

Grid or bordered

The grid layout prints 12 cards touching edge to edge with shared dashed cut lines, so a few long cuts free the whole sheet. The bordered layout gives every card its own rounded frame with a gap around it. On US Letter the grid cards are about 2.5 inches square and the bordered cards about 2.35 inches.

Card stock keeps the pictures from showing through the back. The card-back page is optional; print it on the reverse side if you want every card to look the same face down.