🌵🏔️🌴Habitats
I hope you enjoy the Habitats Lesson Plan! Here is a quick overview:
What is a Habitat? - Printable Book
Animal Habitats Sorting Mats
Desert Animals Addition and Subtraction - Place Value
3D Habitat Dioramas
Camouflage in the Wild
Biome Coloring Pages
World Zoology 3-Part Cards
Habitat Sensory Play: Desert, Rainforest, Ocean, Arctic, Grassland
Yoga in the Jungle
And more...
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Enjoy! Tiff
🌵🏔️🌴 Habitats
What is a Habitat? - Printable Book
Writing can be intimidating for young learners. Help make it fun with this "What Is A Habitat?" Printable Book. Learn all about Habitats while exploring different types. Students explore terrestrial and aquatic habitats in detail while creating their own book.
Animal Habitats Sorting Mats
By: Totschooling
This is the perfect hands-on activity to give your students a quick overview of the different habitats.
In this free set there are six different habitats: rainforest, ocean, polar, wetland, desert and woodland. Each habitat matches to four animals that can be found in that habitat.
English Language Arts
Habitat Writing Center
Practice writing skills and sentence structure with these fun habitat themed writing prompts. There are thirteen different writing prompts in this set to choose from. You can also play an animal habitat sorting game!
Reading Lessons
There are only two resources I like to make sure I include on each week’s lesson plan, Prodigies Music (below) and Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. This book has thousands of 5 star reviews on Amazon for a reason. It’s an effective, no-prep way to teach reading. We have completed this program and the results have been amazing, my daughter can pretty much read anything.
The lessons are short (15-20min), easy to grasp and sequential. The entire lesson is scripted and color coded so it’s fool proof, just read the words in pink. Their claim is that after completing all 100 lessons your child will be able to read at a 2nd grade level!
Math
Desert Animals Place Value
By: Use My Mind Save Your Time
Practice place value addition and subtraction with these fun color by number worksheets. This is for 2nd graders, but can be scaled to your child’s level.
We use Singapore Dimensions as our math curriculum for our main lessons, but I like to incorporate unit based activities to switch it up every once in a while. This was a challenge for my first grader so we completed it together and worked through it with our golden beads set. It really helped her to have a concrete manipulative to work with and she was so proud of herself when she got it!
Supplies: Montessori golden beads set or unifix cubes
Art and Music
Habitat Diorama
Create your own three-dimensional habitat diorama! We made a 3D triangle for the base, decorated it and then created animal figurines out of magic clay.
To make the 3D shape, fold up one corner of a piece of cardstock to make a square. Then fold up the other corner. Cut off the remaining piece. Then cut from one of the corners to the center. Glue the two cut pieces over each other to make a triangle shape. Repeat for each habitat you want to make. We created four habitats and connected them to make a 360 degree display.
There are so many ways to be creative with this project. Instead of magic clay figurines, color pictures of animals, use plastic figurines or stickers. Paint the background with watercolors or use oil pastels. You could even use the Biome Coloring Pages below and just cut and color the images. Enjoy!
Supplies: cardstock, magic clay, crayons, double sided craft tape.
Biome Coloring Pages
If you are looking for a print and go option, this is for you. This set includes five different biomes with information about each. Have fun exploring the desert, rainforest, wetlands, tundra and marine biomes.
Prodigies Music
Do…Re…Mi…
We love Prodigies! Prodigies Music is simply an incredible curriculum for teaching music. Ages 2-5 is the critical time to develop a life-long sense of pitch. Their curriculum is designed to develop a sense of pitch with easy to use desk bells that don’t require any tuning. They also teach piano, recorder and ukulele. Their subscription includes everything you can think of 450+ videos, worksheets, free bell mats, sheet music all color coded so it’s super easy to learn. If you don’t have an instrument they have a bunch of rhythm focused content that doesn’t require an instrument. They even have a free bell app that I use with my toddler when my oldest is practicing.
They have a free trial and discounts for annual memberships! Great deal! You can even check out some of their videos for free on YouTube.
Science - Habitats
Camouflage In The Wild
For many animals, camouflage is an important animal adaptation that helps them blend into their natural habitat.
Match each animal to it’s habitat to see how they blend into their surroundings.
Wild Kratts - Animal Habitats
We ❤️ Wild Kratts! My girls love learning about new animal species and their creature powers.
In this episode, they explore animal habitats in the desert, forest and ocean.
Social Studies
World Zoology 3-Part Cards
By: Research Parent
We love these free World Zoology 3-Part cards. My daughters recently discovered 3-Part cards and now want them for every unit. They love matching the images and text to the control cards and learning facts about all of the animals.
We used a felt continent set we found in the Target Dollar spot and matched the animals to the continents they are from. Then we talked about what type of habitat each animal lives in.
Sensory Play
Rainforest Habitat
My five-year-old had so much fun creating this Rainforest habitat herself. I provided all the materials and she did the rest!
Now my two-year-old has started to make her own rainforest. She’ll take out all of the pieces and then re-create it!
I found these awesome free 3-Part Rainforest cards that match these figurines.
Supplies: green felt for bottom of tray, Rainforest Safari Toob figurines, plastic trees, green pompoms, wooden scoop, scooper.
Desert Habitat
Embark on a journey to the desert with this fun and easy habitat themed bin. Your kiddos will have a blast hiding the figurines in the sand and learning about the different animals in the desert.
Here are the free matching Desert 3-Part Cards for these figurines.
Filler: sand
Supplies: Desert Safari Toob figurines, wooden scoops, plastic trees
Coral Reef Habitat
Dive into a coral reef with this fun water play sensory bin. I love bins that take less than 5 minutes to set up and keep my kiddos busy for hours.
Just fill a tub with water, add aquarium rocks, some coral, and these adorable coral reef figurines and you are set! For extra fun add some water beads!
Get the free matching Coral Reef 3-Part Cards to go with this bin.
Filler: water
Supplies: Coral Reef Safari Toob figurines, coral, aquarium gravel rocks, water beads.
Arctic Habitat
This was a fantastic way to teach about the Arctic and the different animals that live in the extreme cold.
The floating iceberg was so much fun and helped illustrate how aquatic animals swim under the ice.
Filler: water, blue food coloring, aquarium gravel rocks.
Supplies: Arctic Animal Safari Toob figurines, stackable cups and foam block.
Grassland Habitat
Explore the grasslands of Africa. This is a simple and fun sensory play activity your little zoologist will be sure to enjoy. Practice fine motor skills by picking out the animals with the tongs, or by scooping and pouring the green rice “grass”.
Filler: green “grass” rice (recipe here)
Supplies: Wild Safari Toob figurines, wooden scoops, wooden tongs, plastic trees, stackable cups.
Physical Education
Yoga in the Jungle
By: Cosmic Kids Yoga
Go on a yoga adventure in the jungle with this compilation of Yoga videos. Visit Stezzi the parrot in the rainforest, then see if you can spot the animals in the jungle, finally finish up with some guided rainbow waterfall meditation.
Book List
Books We Love
- Little Kids First Big Book of the World (National Geographic Kids)
- The Jungle Book - Alphabet Primer
- World of Forests (sounds book)
- Ice is Nice! (The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library)
- Safari So Good! (The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library)
- If I Ran the Rainforest (The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library)
- Why Oh Why Are Deserts Dry? (The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library)
Don’t have the budget or space to get more books? The library has been pretty great for us so far, but they are sometimes out of the more popular books. One place that you can always count on to find great books is Epic Books! Try Epic Basic for FREE! You can find awesome read to me books for free, Unlimited plan includes access to 40,000+ books!
Know of any other awesome Habitat themed resources? Please comment below!
Do you know anyone else that would enjoy these free weekly lesson plans? Get them on the list!
