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A Place to Be

Author(s): Nancy P. Moreno, PhD, Barbara Z. Tharp, MS, and Paula H. Cutler, BA.
A Place to Be

A baby penguin's "place to be" often is on its father's feet.
© Volodymyr Goink.

  • Grades:
  • K-2
  • Length: 30 Minutes

Overview

Students play a “Concentration” type card game, matching animals with their “places to be.”

This activity is from the Living Things and Their Needs Teacher's Guide. Although it is most appropriate for use with students in grades K-2, the lesson is easily adaptable for other grade levels. The guide also is available in print format.

Teacher Background

Within any given ecosystem, each living thing occupies a physical space in which it survives and is able to meet its needs. Young children may identify most with places that resemble human houses (for example, birds’ nests, ant mounds or bears’ dens). It is important to keep in mind, however, that most plants and animals do not have a “home” in the same way as people. At the same time, animals, in particular, do need safe places in which to hide from predators, raise their young and rest.

Plants, animals and other organisms interact in countless ways. In most ecosystems, organisms share some resources (air, for example) and compete for others (nutrients in soil, food and, in some cases, water). The places where a given organism can survive are limited by its requirements for food and water and by the temperature range in which it is adapted to live.

Related Content

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    Living Things and Their Needs Teacher Guide

    The Living Things and Their Needs Teacher's Guide provides resources that allow very young students to explore living and nonliving things and learn about the basic needs of plants, animals, and people. (10 activities)

  • Tillena Lou's Day in the Sun

    Tillena Lou’s Day in the Sun Reading

    Tillena Lou and her siblings spend a lazy day imagining what it might be like if they were other types of animals. What would they need to survive?


Funding

Science Education Partnership Award, NIH

Science Education Partnership Award, NIH

Filling the Gaps: K-6 Science/Health Education
Grant Number: 5R25RR013454