Animal Fancy Dress: 5 Animal Costumes For Kids [Cute And Cuddly EDITION]

Author Gonzalo / Posts / Published: 15/10/2019

Searching for cute animal costumes for kids? Children of all ages love to dress up and they really love dressing up as animals! Whether it’s a birthday celebration, Christmas, Halloween or just a weekend treat, encouraging your kids to play dress up games helps to foster their imagination. Of all the costumes for kids that you can pull together yourself, some of the cutest and most cuddly are animals, and since kids love dressing up in animal costumes, it’s a win-win situation! So let’s take a look at five of the best animal costumes for kids this year, whether it’s easy animal costumes for Halloween or for birthdays, Christmas or any other special time.

1. Dog costume

One of the easiest these of these costumes is Spot The Dog, a fictional puppy in children’s books who is a firm favourite with toddlers and preschoolers around the world. Spot is a yellow puppy with a brown spot on each side of his body, but he also has a brown tip on his tail. Just like children, Spot is full of curiosity and a desire to learn new things and share new experiences.

To create your dog costumes you need a long-sleeved and long-legged yellow body-suit, but you could substitute yellow leggings and a long-sleeved t-shirt. You need some brown furry material cut into two spots and a furry brown tip for the tail, applied with a hot glue gun.

The tail you can make out of yellow material rolled into a tube and glued together. Yellow or brown gloves and socks are needed next, followed by the floppy ears that can be made from brown fur material and glued to a headband. Before long you will have your own little Spot The Dog!

Boy wearing a plush brown dog hooded jumpsuit with orange stomach and face. Shop animal costumes.

2. Cat costume

Dressing up as a cat seems to be very popular with little girls and you might already have everything you need at home. So for your very first cat costume, let’s make a black cat because they are purrfect as a witch’s companion for Halloween parties.

You are going to need a full black leotard or black leggings and a black jacket or a long-sleeved t-shirt. You will also need some contrasting furry material, sufficient to create two wrist bands and ankle bands, long furry tail and ears. The ears can be triangles glued to the headband and the tail can be just a long strip of material glued to the backside of the costume. Draw some cat whiskers on your child’s face and give them a pretty collar and you have your own purrfect furry child ready for their party!

3. Lion costume

Kids love wild animals at the zoo and they are particularly enamoured with the lions! These costumes are easy to make and your kids will be very excited to dress up as a lion on their big day. In fact, it’s going to be difficult to get them out of these costumes at the end of the day!

There are two ways to create this lion costume, either using fur or fleece material and sewing an actual costume together or by buying tan coloured leggings and a long-sleeved t-shirt as the base. If you go with the easier second method, you will still need some brown gloves and socks or boots for your little lion, as well as a big lion’s mane that can be made from an ostrich feather boa glued to a cap with triangles for the ears. Whichever method you choose, you will have your own little king of the jungle!

Woman and man wearing a orange and yellow lion hooded jumpsuit. Shop animal costumes here.

4. Kangaroo costumes

Kids love wallabies and kangaroos and thoroughly enjoy feeding them in zoos and wildlife centres. These might be a little trickier to make than some of the other costumes, but it will be well worth it in the end. The easiest way to create your little kangaroo is to buy a brown pair of leggings and a long-sleeved t-shirt, using these as the base of the costume. Next, buy some white furry material, cut it into an oblong shape that covers the chest and tummy and use a hot glue gun to stick it to the t-shirt, so that it flaps over the leggings (so they can remove their costume easily).

Then you need to make a joey pouch by simply gluing the second piece of material onto the tummy area of the flap, just like a pocket. Finally, find a brown skull cap, cut out eyes, nose and a mouth for the kangaroo from felt and glue in place on the front of the skull cap and then gluing triangles on the top for the ears. Your children will be bouncing around the garden when they wear these wonderful cuddly animal costumes for kids!

5. Bumblebee

What little kid wouldn’t want to be a busy bumble bee buzzing around the flowers in the garden? One of the easiest ways to make a bumblebee costume is to buy a plain yellow t-shirt dress or yellow leggings and a long-sleeved t-shirt. Depending on the type of material in these clothes you will need to either paint black stripes around the width of these garments or glue black material in place.

A black headband with black pipe cleaners attached will do for the bumble bee’s antennas, but don’t forget to glue black pom poms on the ends. Last you need some bumblebee wings which can be fairy wings dyed black (bought from the dollar stores) or cardboard cut into shape and attached with string or stapled to the back of their dress or t-shirt.