This lesson will help students understand that animals need to adapt to keep up with their changing environment. Students will learn about some environmental changes and how animals adapt to them, as well as exploring terms like migration and camouflage, and what animals do to secure survival. (Most appropriate for grade levels 3-5.)
Lesson Time: 60-75 minutes
Student Activity 1: This activity has small groups playing a game that explores the reasons for bat migration, and the many things the animals may experience along the way, as they try to survive.
Student Activity 2: This activity also has small groups working together. Each group is challenged to find items in “the environment” camouflaged by color. Who will find the most? Who will work the quickest? Students will then connect this activity to the real-world situation for predators and prey.
Group work: Students will work in groups of 4-5 in activity #1 and groups of 3-4 in activity #2. In order to save time, teachers are asked to create the groups before our Wizard arrives.
Science Standards:
3.LS.2: Individuals of the same kind of organism differ in their inherited traits. These differences give some individuals an advantage in surviving and/or reproducing.
4.LS.1: Changes in an organism’s environment are sometimes beneficial to its survival and sometimes harmful.
5.LS.1: Organisms perform a variety of roles in an ecosystem.