Wrapping Up Animal Habitats

For the past month or so we have been learning about animal habitats and adaptations in our science time. We learned about all kinds of different animal homes. We learned that animals have special characteristics that help them live in the places that they live.

 

Three specific places that we learned about were the forest, ocean, and desert. We learned that forest animals make their homes in trees and are dark colors so that they can blend in to their surroundings. We learned that there are all kinds of animals living in the ocean. We learned how fish use their gills to breathe under water in both salt and fresh water. Finally, we learned how animals adapt to living in the desert. We learned that camels have all kinds of special features that enable them to live in the desert, where not many animals live. They have special hooves with two toes that help them walk on sand, really big eyelashes that keep sand out of their eyes, really furry ears to keep the sand out, and a hump that stores fat so that they can live where there is little food or water.

 

As a wrap up and review to all of these, I gave the children an animal habitat project. I split the class into groups based on the different habitats that we had studied. Each group had two books based on their habitat to give them ideas and a blank poster. Their assignment was to fill up their poster with pictures and words that described their habitat.

 





 

After each group completed their poster, they had to give a little presentation to the class. Not only were were working on science, we were also practicing 3 of the 4 C's for 21st Century Learning: Communication, Creativity,  and Collaboration. The children had to communicate with one another to decide what to put on their poster, they had to come up with a creative way to show it, and they had to work together to do it. We have never done a true group project before, so I thought this was a chance for the children to practice working together and agreeing in a group. They really surprised me and worked together like great little teams!

Here are their presentations. I thought they were fantastic considering we have never done anything like this before!  It is definitely a start! I hope for us to do more collaborative activities like this in the future.