Pre-Visit Activities : Habitat Hunts : Procedures
K-Second Grade Online Curriculum : Habitats

Materials

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Procedure

  1. Review with students what living things are. Discuss with students that living things need a place to live and grow where they can get the things they need to survive. Explain that this place is called a habitat. Have students discuss what their habitat is and how they can get the things they need to live and grow in their habitat.
  2. Take the students outside onto the school yard and explain that they will be looking for living things and their habitats. As a group, identify a living thing on the playground and discuss where you found it. Discuss where the living thing might find air, food and water in the area. Discuss that this is the living thing's habitat. Do this with a few more living things until the students understand.
  3. Explain to students that they will look for living things on their own to try to determine the living thing's habitat. Give each student a data sheet to record what they saw and where they saw it. Students can either write or draw their observations.
  4. Bring the students into the classroom and review with them what they observed. List each of the living things the students saw on a chart on the board. Then list all the places the students saw the living thing. Explain that all the places the living thing was seen is the living thing's habitat. For example, if students saw ants on the ground, but some other students saw ants climbing a tree, both are part of the ant's habitat. If students saw grass in the schoolyard, but not in the woods near the school, explain that an open field is a habitat for grass, but not the woods.
  5.  Show students pictures of living things they are familiar with, such as fish, bumblebees, bluejays, cactus and people, and then show them pictures out of order of habitats these living things would be in such as ponds, a field of flowers, a tree, a desert and a city. Have students determine which living thing best fits into which habitat.

Follow-up question

  1. Do any living things make a person's house their habitat besides people? How do they get the things they need to survive?
  2. Can an animal live outside of its habitat? Can a fish live on land? Can a cow live up in a tree?