Animal Habitats

Learning goal: The world has many different environments, and distinct environments support the life of different types of organisms. Animals have adaptations (or traits) that help them survive in different environments.

• Reading= If You’re Happy and You Know It: Jungle Edition by Andy Warhola, The Salamander Room by Anne Mazer, Zoo Looking by Mem Fox (or Good Night, Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann), Our Earth by Anne Rockwell and What Do You Do with a Tail Like This? by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page (or What Do You Do? by Mandy Stanley). Letter of the day: Z is for zoo.
• Art= Draw a picture of your favorite animal or an imaginary animal. Include elements of its habitat in your drawing. Invite your child to tell you about the animal. Where does it live? What does it eat? Does it swim, walk, slither or fly? What else can it do? Optional: provide feathers, yarn, bird seed or sand paper to add texture to the animal.
• Science= Supply six bowls filled with grass, hay, tree leaves (or pine needles), sand, water and ice. The bowls represent different animal habitats, such as grasslands, farms, forests, deserts, lakes and snow. Provide many different types of plastic animals. Invite children to place each animal in their favorite home (or habitat). Then choose two animals and imagine they trade places. Do you think they could survive in their new home? Why or why not? Which traits (or adaptations) might be helpful in their new habitat? Which adaptations would not be helpful? (For a list of adaptations for a variety of organisms visit National Geographic Kids.) Extension: Place one animal on each continent in a world map. Discuss how animals seen at the zoo have come from all over the world.
  
• Play= Play a game of animal charades, dramatize a circus act, or visit your local zoo. Notice the different habitats that have been re-created to help zoo animals feel at home.

Fun facts: Adaptations are heritable traits (e.g., a body part or a behavior) that help an organism survive and reproduce in a particular environment. The adaptations of any particular species have evolved over a long period of time by the process of natural selection.