Our science focus this month is plant and animal habitats and their environments. In addition to looking at the parent and offspring relationship and how they meet their needs, we also study what they need to survive. As I’ve said before, my monthly themes are based on our science and social studies standards/units. We use this overall theme to engage student learning and completely immerse the kiddos in the topic. I try to base as much of our reading and writing and math on those central ideas as possible. Each month first grade classrooms are transformed into the unit of study.

Studying animals and plants and their habitats is one of my favorites.

We’ve been busy.

A Look at the Desert

October’s habitat study started out with a visit to the desert.

After discussing the trials that the desert climate offers, we discovered the adaptations that desert plants and animals have that allow them to live quite comfortably in this arid and commonly hot habitat. Then we completed an A LOOK at the Desert activity.

Hibernating to Survive

After the desert we took a trip to the forest.

We talked about why animals hibernate while we “visited” the forest. Then we worked on the “Nighty, Night Bear!” lesson and craft.

The Layers of the Rainforest

This week we kicked back in the rainforest and discovered all it’s layers.

This “Hanging Around the Rainforest” activity was lots of fun for the kiddos. We read the little banana-shaped book and used our inference skills to determine which rainforest animal would fit best with the information provided.

It actually comes with 2 different sized monkeys. I LOVE the larger ones, but 30 large monkeys don’t fit too well on the bulletin board.

To introduce this unit we look at a lot of books, online videos, Scholastic News, and online images. We also work with these posters. The kids LOVE filling in and coloring their own!

Headers to label the different layers of your rainforest bulletin board as well as the board itself are also included.

Each of these habitat activities are available individually. They are also available in a bundle.

Savanna Extras

The bundle also includes some FREE BONUS vocabulary cards.

The curriculum police that seem to be all the rage (hopefully this is a quickly dying fad) lately are crawling the rooms again this week. I hope at least one of them leaves my room with a clearer understanding that ENGAGING the students with deep and thorough concepts is important and feeds learning and student buy in! This ridiculous trend of sticking to the district purchased curriculum and nothing else is just “tho tho sad”.

I LOVE that the kiddos are always so excited about this unit. I enjoy doing it during the first part of the year because it truly encourages student buy in to the fun we have in engaging in a thematic unit each month!

What’s your favorite habitat to teach about?