Counting Living Things in a Schoolyard, Read the Table

Take a short walk around your yard or a park and count the kinds of animals you see before the table and graph pages. Talk about what each place gives an animal, like water, plants and places to hide. Check each page with the answer key.

Read one class's table of a schoolyard count with 25 ants and 3 robins, then answer questions. A habitat is the place where a plant or animal lives. The directions on the page read: Read the passage and the table. Then, turn the page and answer the questions. On page 2: Use the passage and the table on page 1. Circle the letter of the best answer for questions 1 to 3, and write the answers to questions 4 and 5 on the lines. The answer key covers the questions on page 2.

Yes, both. We made it for 2nd Grade animals, and the page works the same whether it lands on a kitchen table or a center rotation. At home, most families go through it together and talk the answers out loud, and that talking is where most of the learning happens with animal habitats. In class it runs well as independent work while you pull a small group. Print one copy or thirty, whichever the day needs.

A habitat is the place where an animal lives. It gives the animal food, water and shelter, a safe place to rest or hide. A beaver's habitat is a pond or stream, where it builds a dam and a lodge.

Places with more plants, water and shelter have more kinds of animals. On one sheet, one class counted 9 kinds of animals at a pond edge, 6 in a garden and 2 in a parking lot, which has hard ground and almost no plants or water (2-LS4-1).

Each animal has body parts that help it handle its weather. A camel's hump holds fat and its wide feet keep it from sinking in sand, while a caribou's wide hooves work like snowshoes. Walruses keep warm with thick blubber, and fennec foxes let out heat through huge ears.

Yes. All 10 animal habitats sheets have an answer key, and the newer two page sheets give sample answers for the questions children answer in their own words.