A rumble in the jungle. Deep-sea exploration. A rainforest pecking order. Perfectly packaged in eco-natural puzzle form — designed for tiny grasping hands.
Hailing from every habitat on earth, animal puzzles made of wood bring the animal kingdom indoors for brainy zoological at-home activities — for animal-loving toddlers and babies to laugh like a monkey and memorize like an elephant.
“You and me baby, ain’t nothin’ but mammals — so let’s solve puzzles like you see on the Discovery Channel.”
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(01) Melissa & Doug Animals Wooden Peg Puzzles Set (Farm, Pets, Ocean)
Designed for Montessori-inspired homeschooling, Melissa & Doug Animals Wooden Peg Puzzles Set (Farm, Pets, Ocean) works wonders to indulge your child in an interesting world of farm animals and dive into the ocean to experience the ocean life.
It features beautiful animal illustrations, with these same pictures located under each piece on the puzzle board to make it easy for your kiddo to sort and match these animals back into their blanks (places on the board where you put puzzle pieces).
For the young ones, picking up and placing pieces is a good exercise that enhances memory and hand-eye coordination.
(02) BeginAgain Animal Parade Puzzle Playset (A to Z)
Animals plus alphabet all in one? Now we’re talking!
Introducing the letters of the alphabet to your little one is great fun with this chunky-piece animal playset as-cute-as-could-be.
Have your child memorize the alphabet sequence marked on each animal from Aa (phonic sound /aaaa/) Alligator to Zz (/zzzz/) Zebra.
This BeginAgain ABC learning game will help your child to develop creative thinking and master the letters of alphabets (both the upper-case on one side and lower-case letters on the other side).
3D block animals mean early learners can “parade them around” by sorting in a row — from A to Z, from biggest to smallest, from favorite to least favorite. With animals, numbers, colors, sizes, and fun little personalities, BeginAgain lives up to their name for open-ended puzzle toys.
(03) Bannor Toys Natural Wood Animal Puzzle For Babies
This puzzle is durable and super cute for introducing animals to your little one — a whale, a kangaroo, a polar bear, and a bunny rabbit.
These bulky-shaped animals are fit for your child to hold on in little hands and refine grasping skills.
Made of premium hardwood — maple (light), walnut (dark), cherry (reddish), and Baltic birch (light) — and finished with an organic beeswax and flaxseed oil finish — it’s a perfectly baby-safe toy.
Your child will understand the spatial relation by placing the animals in their right spots and this repeated brain exercise will enhance the concentration level to a great extent.
(04) Montessori Mama Chunky Animal Toddler Puzzles (4-Pack)
This radiant puzzle is a considerate way to teach the number sequence to a toddler. There are 8 to 10 pieces per puzzle, with the numbers in sequence 1 to the highest number.
Your toddler can arrange these number blocks to accomplish your child’s favorite jigsaw animal. After you count to 8 or 10, the animal completes — a bear, a dolphin, a rabbit, and a brontosaurus (like humans, technically an animal)!
This colorful assembling toy is adorable and attractive for young kids for counting numerals and improves hand-eye coordination by developing small muscles.
(05) Crafts By Paragon Handmade Wooden Animal Jigsaw Puzzles
With BeginAgain, we saw a puzzle each piece in the shape of an animal (26 animals to span the alphabet). Now with Crafts By Paragon, all the pieces form 1 single elaborate animal shape.
Letters or numbers? A crab or rooster from 1 to 10. An alligator or elephant from A to Z.
These vibrant wooden animal puzzles and playsets will make learning super-duper fun! Joining piece to piece, your child organically learns basic numbers and alphabet recognition. Even better — they’re arranged in the correct sequence from animal head to toe — which makes memorization that much more intuitive.
Plus multifaceted learning objectives that make parents proud — promoting fine motor skills, problem-solving skills, creative thinking, and cognitive functions.
(06) Aitey Wooden Animal Kids’ Jigsaw Puzzle Set (6-Pack)
Recommended for children 2-5 years, here’s a budget-friendly 6-puzzle set of kids’ favorite animals — zebra, panda, leopard, giraffe, elephant, and squirrel.
Each puzzle in the pack is a perfect square (just under 6” inches) — laid flat on a tabletop for activity time, or stacked on top of each other for convenient storage.
Or distract your child from cell phone screen time by taking these easy-to-carry animal puzzles along while traveling. They’ll be surprised to see the colorful artwork underneath each piece.
9 pieces per puzzle, each puzzle with a unique jigsaw pattern — brain-boosting and will provide your child a sense of accomplishment.
A complete set of jigsaw puzzles offers more self-learning opportunities for your child. When they get bored with one, try the next one.
(07) Quokka Educational Wooden Animal Matching Puzzles (3-Pack)
Montessori parents will really like this because the animal illustrations are realistic — photos of animals instead of “cartoons or cutesy”. It’s better for kids to identify detailed distinctions between different animals.
Basically, it’s like Montessori classified cards in puzzle form!
For a helpful and educational hint — the very same matching pictures are printed under each jigsaw — often accompanied by the name of the element spelled out (“goat” “cow” “duck”).
This is the ideal way to boost kids’ self-correction and independent thinking — when you get it wrong, you see why, and learn to change your approach. (It’s OK, keep trying!)
(08) Top Bright Jungle Animal Artwork Toddler Jigsaw Puzzle
Recommended for kids 4 to 8 years — here’s an animal jigsaw puzzle to improve your child’s cognitive skills, logical reasoning, and problem-solving. Finished with non-toxic water-based paint and rounded wood edges for delicate hands and a safe learning experience.
Most puzzles we’ve looked at so far focus on a single animal per piece or per puzzle — but this one’s more like an adult jigsaw puzzle. You start with the complete picture in mind (referring to the box artwork), focusing on the shape of the jig and the colors on the edges.
Did I mention it’s double-sided? Jungle theme on the front. Transportation theme on the back. Extra value for parents who know a deal when they see one.
(09) Busy People Personalized Name Puzzle (Letter & Animal Pieces)
If you’ve never heard about personalized wooden puzzles before — you’re in for a treat!
It’s your child’s name as a one-of-a-kind personalized wooden letter puzzle. What better way to familiarize your child with the letters of their name?!
Busy People brand knows just how much kiddos love animals – so they’ve put together a “name puzzle plus animal pieces”. Learn how to spell your name, plus how to identify animals on the same puzzle board.
Cute and cartoon animal faces are labeled in plain English to encourage reading — a personalized name puzzle is a smart way to keep the child engaged and entertained while he learns to spell his own name.
(10) Magifire 6-Inch Wooden Puzzle Set (Animals, Insects, Vehicles)
A useful puzzle to help your child to discern different colors and sort animals, bugs, shapes, vehicles, and more. An excellent choice for variety — because animals aren’t the only popular early learning theme.
Recommended for ages 2 to 3 years — it’s both early entry and short-lived. But as a budget option — you might be OK with that. Imagination, concentration, and keeping your little one engaged into a colorfully painted learning experience — at least for a window of 12 months.
Plus it includes a drawstring carry bag for convenient playtime for long car rides.
Looking for a price comparison? XPCare brand offers the exact same puzzle set. Magifire and XPCare are both what I like to call “factory brands” — foreign manufacturers with low-priced toys.)
(11) Coogam Wooden Baby Sorting Puzzle Toy (Shape, Color, and Animal)
Looking ahead to preschool level skills — Coogam’s baby-friendly wooden animal sorting puzzle is helpful for shape and color recognition.
The board is a 6” inch perfect square — with 4 animal face sections (ox, lion, elephant, and fox).
Matching the geometric shapes with the relevant animal face shape makes matching and sorting most exciting.
Pro tip — you can also use these shapes puzzles as artsy stencils. Similar to classic Montessori insets, your kiddo will learn to hold a writing utensil steady, carefully follow each contour, and create colorful shapes on paper.
(12) BeginAgain Endangered Animals Wooden Balance Boat Puzzle Game
Inspired by the Montessori pink tower — for teaching visual perception and a sense of balance — BeginAgain offers a “Noah’s Ark” style alternative with 16 endangered animals from every continent.
The sad fact of deforestation and climate change means many lovable animals like this are at risk. Educating your little one about this hard truth won’t be fun — but it’s a message that needs to be heard.
There’s no one singular solution to a wooden animal balance puzzle like this. As long as the wobbly boat base is standing upright, you’re doing it right! (Similar to Jenga.)
Focus, steady your hands, and be gentle — placing the colorful animals on top of the boat provides excellent gripping and grasping exercises for kids’ hand muscles — a big motor development and dexterity boost.
Just imagine the sense of achievement when you get all 16 animals delicately balanced. High-five!
(13) Skyfield Early Learner’s Solid Color Animal Jigsaw Puzzles
Quite similar to the Magifire 6-puzzle set we saw before — this time painted with more solid colors, and focused exclusively on animals — frog, fish, hippo, owl, elephant, and snail.
It’s recommended for babies 1 year old to toddlers 3 years old — for budding animal lovers learning to discern basic colors (primary and secondary).
(14) Le Toy Van Forest Animal Blocks Wooden Stacking Puzzle
Like the BeginAgain animal balance boat — without the boat. They’re wooden stacking blocks shaped like the cast from Disney’s Bambi. What a delightful way to familiarize yourself with these all types of friendly forest critters.
Prime for young toddlers 18+ months — stacking toys like this develops a sense of order and arrangement, and encourages practice with counting and colors.
Stack them up any way you please — and explain why! With an animal stacking puzzle — it’s prime time for early talkers to gab about the diverse world of animal species.
(15) BeginAgain BuddyBlocks Safari Animals
A cube has 6 sides. BeginAgain’s BuddyBlocks have a part of an animal printed onto each side. To solve the puzzle arrange the blocks with all 4 sides into a complete animal — elephant, monkey, lion, and zebra.
The puzzle block size is suitable for young toddlers 18+ months old — it’s endless fun for stacking, rolling, grabbing, or exploring adorable images of animals in all sorts of puzzle combinations.
You can introduce animals, their wild sounds, and their bright colors. You can forget the animals, and stack them up just like regular wooden blocks.
(16) Melissa & Doug Self-Correcting Animal Learning Puzzle Cards
Learning and playing are combined in an appealing way for this very special type of Montessori puzzle.
The idea behind “self-correcting” is that — each piece has only one other piece that matches. When early learners think two pieces are a match, but the pieces don’t fit — you know you’ve got it wrong, and need to try again.
Associating letters and numbers with vocabulary and objects? That’s a much more holistic way to approach these academic basics.
Self-correcting wooden jigsaw puzzles benefit learning letters and numbers with straightforward visual aids. To associate letters with something real in this world, the “Dd” matches with a picture of a dog to help with association (brain connections). Likewise for numbers, the “4” matches with a picture of 4 crabs.
Once snapped together (you’ve got a match) — each pair is rectangular like a flashcard. Perfect for arranging out the correct sequence A, B, C to X, Y, Z (and 1, 2, 3 to 18, 19, 20).
(17) Wood Contour Canada Montessori Animal Matching Cards
Here’s something parents with a Ph.D. in zoology will appreciate.
Little rounded wooden squares with lifelike animal photographs printed onto the surface. Indeed, a puzzle doesn’t have to have tabs (outies) or blanks (innies) to be a perfectly legitimate puzzle.
Montessori matching cards are a top-notch activity to improve observation and identification. Wood Contour Canada brand offers highly-specific animal sets. Just one example — “forest birds” and “tropical birds” are separate sets. Explore dozens more.
Holding an animal card stimulates tactile senses, perception, and observation of each new animal your child learns. They’ll learn comparison and how to express comparison through language. “The orangutan is bigger than the monkey, but the gorilla is the biggest of them all.”
(18) Melissa & Doug Wooden Animal Magnets Box Set
Ideal for at home in the fridge (while mom and dad are busy in the kitchen), or carrying along for a car ride in its handy storage box.
Melissa & Doug’s sturdy animal magnets stick to the refrigerator (or any magnetically receptive surface) to unlock a gravity-defying open-ended animal puzzle.
Handover them over to your child, talk about them to build vocabulary, and ask to group them together based on different criteria.
