Plants vs Animals Worksheets – Grade 2 Science Set

Ten single-page worksheets have students sort, match, and classify a recurring list of common plants and animals through ten different activity formats, with no answer keys provided.

Grades: Grades 1–3, Elementary
Pages: 10
File type: PDF
Preparation: Print ready

Updated Apr 12, 2025

Subject: Life Sciences, Science
Topic: Plants, Animals
Resource types: Worksheets, Worksheets & Printables
Preparation: Print ready

From the author

About this resource

Introduction

Introduce children to the amazing world of plants and animals with this engaging 10-worksheet collection! Each activity is designed to promote curiosity, support early science learning, and strengthen critical thinking through fun and interactive tasks.

Objective:

To help students build foundational knowledge of plants and animals, including characteristics, differences, and key life science concepts.

What’s Included:

10 printable worksheets (non-editable)

Each worksheet features an engaging task with 11 examples

Activities include identifying, matching, categorizing, and comparing plants and animals

Grades / Ages:

Ideal for Grades 1–3

Implementation Format:

Use in classrooms, homeschool settings, or science centres

Great for individual practice, group work, or homework

Answer Key:

Not included

File Type:

PDF (Non-editable)

Number of Pages:

10 pages total

License:

Paid product – for personal or single-classroom use only

Tags to Use:

Plants and Animals, Life Science, Science Worksheets, Printable PDF, Early Science Skills, Homeschool Science, Grade 2 Activities, Classifying Animals and Plants

In the classroom

Teaching tips & learning objectives

Learning objectives

Classify a given living thing as a plant or an animal based on its known characteristics.
Apply the plant/animal distinction across ten different task formats, including matching, sorting, true/false judgment, and word choice.
Associate familiar plants and animals with a basic need (such as sunlight, water, or shelter) appropriate to each.

Teaching tips

Start with Worksheet 1's simple label task before moving to the true/false and bracketed-choice worksheets, which require applying the same knowledge in less direct phrasing.
Since no answer key is included, consider working through Worksheet 1 as a whole-class model before assigning the remaining nine worksheets independently.
Use Worksheet 10 (matching needs) as a bridge into a broader life-science needs-of-living-things discussion, since it asks students to reason beyond simple classification.

Skills covered

Plant/animal classification — across all ten worksheets, students apply the same core distinction to a recurring, overlapping list of familiar living things.
Multi-format task transfer — the same content knowledge is tested through direct labeling, matching, sorting, true/false judgment, bracketed word choice, odd-one-out, and needs-matching formats.
Basic needs of living things — Worksheet 10 extends classification into associating each plant or animal with something it requires, such as sunlight, water, or shelter.

Good to know

Questions teachers ask about this resource

Does every worksheet use the same list of plants and animals, or does the list change?

The same core set of familiar plants and animals (dog, sunflower, elephant, cactus, cow, pine tree, rabbit, and others) recurs across most of the ten worksheets, so students see repeated exposure to the same items in different task formats rather than an ever-expanding vocabulary list.

What does the last worksheet ask students to do differently from the others?

Worksheet 10 moves past plant/animal labeling into matching each living thing to a need it depends on — for example, matching a fish to water or a cactus to sunlight — which requires a step of reasoning beyond simple classification.