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Reception Animals
Animal Habitats

Where do the animals of the world like to live? Learn about the amazing range of habitats around the Earth and how animals are adapted to live there. This block will look at hot and cold habitats, dry and wet habitats and high and low habitats. Learn through stories, information sources and direct observation of your local area. Use expressive arts to capture your learning and to express your own ideas, creating your own original animal adapted for your favourite habitat.

block outcomes

Session 1 Who lives here?

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Objectives

Early learning goals

  • Know about similarities and differences in relation to places, objects, materials and living things.
  • Talk about the features of the immediate environment and how environments might vary from one another.
  • Make observations of animals and plants and explain why some things occur, and talk about changes.
  • Try new activities confidently, and say why some activities are liked more than others.
  • Talk about ideas and choose the resources needed for the chosen activities.
  • Follow instructions involving several ideas or actions.
  • Answer ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions about experiences and in response to stories or events.
  • Sing songs, make music and dance, and experiment with ways of changing them.
  • Safely use and explore a variety of materials, tools and techniques, experimenting with colour, design, texture, form and function.

Lesson Planning

Learn about the word habitat and explore amazing different habitats all over the word. Learn names for animal’s homes. Create a texture collage by picking and choosing resources and materials that fit with the habitat. Put the collage together to make a habitat display.

Children will:

  • Understand what a habitat is.
  • Begin to know which habitats some animals might live in.
  • Begin to name some of the habitats.
  • Describe the texture of a material.
  • Choose materials to create a collage based on their texture and colour.

Provided Resources

  • Habitat picture sheet
  • Descriptions of habitats

You Will Need

  • Counters
  • A4 card or paper
  • Lots of different texture materials
  • A display board split into 4 sections

Weblinks

There are no weblinks needed for this session.

Session 2 Hot!

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Objectives

Early learning goals

  • Know about similarities and differences in relation to places, objects, materials and living things.
  • Talk about the features of the immediate environment and how environments might vary from one another.
  • Make observations of animals and plants and explain why some things occur, and talk about changes.
  • Express self effectively, showing awareness of listeners’ needs.
  • Use past, present and future forms accurately when talking about events that have happened or are to happen in the future.
  • Develop narratives and explanations by connecting ideas or events.
  • Sing songs, make music and dance, and experiment with ways of changing them.
  • Safely use and explore a variety of materials, tools and techniques, experimenting with colour, design, texture, form and function.

Lesson Planning

Learn all about hot animals and the different habitats they live in. Think about how they are adapted to their environment and how they stay safe. Draw and paint animals that live in hot climates to add to the collage habitat display. Sort and describe animals that live in hot habitats, go on a safari adventure and spot animals, dance to African music and make lions.

Children will:

  • Be able to name animals that live in a hot habitat.
  • Begin to say why animals are suited to live there.
  • Sort different animals as to where they live.

Provided Resources

  • Hot habitats and hot habitat animals
  • Animals from non-hot habitats

You Will Need

  • Small world animals
  • Scarves
  • Safari props
  • Paints
  • Collage materials
  • Paper plate
  • Coloured wool

Session 3 Cold!

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Objectives

Early learning goals

  • Know about similarities and differences in relation to places, objects, materials and living things.
  • Talk about the features of the immediate environment and how environments might vary from one another.
  • Make observations of animals and plants and explain why some things occur, and talk about changes.
  • Use what has been learnt about media and materials in original ways, thinking about uses and purposes.
  • Represent ideas, thoughts and feelings through design and technology, art, music, dance, role-play and stories.
  • Use phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds.

Lesson Planning

Learn about animals that live in cold climates and think about how hard this must be. Discuss ways that animals adapt to their habitat to help them. Write some of these animals down by segmenting. Watch a video clip about cold habitats and remember some information to share with the class. Paint a favourite cold climate animal to add to the texture collage. Create ‘cold’ dances to the soundtrack of Frozen, role-play with small-world animals and make their own polar bear.

Children will:

  • Name some animals that live in cold climates.
  • Begin to understand how they have adapted to their environment.
  • Use their phonic knowledge to spell animal names or hear the initial sounds.

You Will Need

  • Music player
  • Blocks of ice with animals inside
  • Globes and magnifying glasses
  • Shaving foam
  • Plastic tray
  • Cotton wool
  • White wool

Session 4 Wet!

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Objectives

Early learning goals

  • Know about similarities and differences in relation to places, objects, materials and living things.
  • Talk about the features of the immediate environment and how environments might vary from one another.
  • Make observations of animals and plants and explain why some things occur, and talk about changes.
  • Express self effectively, showing awareness of listeners’ needs.
  • Use past, present and future forms accurately when talking about events that have happened or are to happen in the future.
  • Develop narratives and explanations by connecting ideas or events.
  • Sing songs, make music and dance, and experiment with ways of changing them.
  • Safely use and explore a variety of materials, tools and techniques, experimenting with colour, design, texture, form and function.

Lesson Planning

Listen to water music and relax while thinking abut what animals might live in water. Watch a video clip on habitats and remember facts. Be aware of other wet habitats and what might live in them. Make an animal that lives in a wet habitat for the collage display and sort animals according to where they live. Play a sorting game on the computers, look through non-fiction books to find fascinating facts, and create underwater number sentences.

Children will:

  • Recognise and name some animals that live in a wet habitat.
  • Begin to talk about how they have adapted to their environment.
  • Understand what a wet habitat might look like.
  • Ask questions and use good reasoning to explain their answers to questions.

Provided Resources

  • Habitats
  • Different wet habitat animals
  • Number sentence sheets

You Will Need

  • Music player
  • Computers or tablets
  • Small world wet habitat animals
  • Plastic tray
  • Rocks
  • Glitter
  • Shells
  • Non-fiction books about the sea
  • Magnifying glasses
  • Blue tissue paper
  • Counting sheets and counters

Session 5 High and low!

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Objectives

Early learning goals

  • Express self effectively, showing awareness of listeners’ needs.
  • Use past, present and future forms accurately when talking about events that have happened or are to happen in the future.
  • Develop narratives and explanations by connecting ideas or events.
  • Know about similarities and differences in relation to places, objects, materials and living things.
  • Talk about the features of the immediate environment and how environments might vary from one another.
  • Make observations of animals and plants and explain why some things occur, and talk about changes.
  • Sing songs, make music and dance, and experiment with ways of changing them.
  • Safely use and explore a variety of materials, tools and techniques, experimenting with colour, design, texture, form and function.

Lesson Planning

Learn about two habitats and that some animals like to make their homes high and others prefer to stay near the ground. Use reasoning to explain where they think an animal might live and why they think this. Paint a picture of animals that live high and low for the display collage, make animal homes from playdough, nests from real twigs and leaves, sort animals and play a habitat sorting game

Children will:

  • Name some animals that live in high and low habitats.
  • Look at how different animals have adapted to live in their habitats.
  • Create an observational drawing of an animal to add to a display.

Provided Resources

  • Animals that live in high and low habitats
  • Sorting animals and habitats
  • Different habitats sheets

You Will Need

  • Small world animals
  • Playdough
  • Twigs and sticks to make nests

Session 6 Animal inventors

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Objectives

Early learning goals

  • Know about similarities and differences in relation to places, objects, materials and living things.
  • Talk about the features of the immediate environment and how environments might vary from one another.
  • Make observations of animals and plants and explain why some things occur, and talk about changes.
  • Sing songs, make music and dance, and experiment with ways of changing them.
  • Safely use and explore a variety of materials, tools and techniques, experimenting with colour, design, texture, form and function.
  • Use what has been learnt about media and materials in original ways, thinking about uses and purposes.
  • Represent ideas, thoughts and feelings through design and technology, art, music, dance, role-play and stories.
  • Use phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds.
  • Write some irregular common words.
  • Write simple sentences which can be read by themselves and others. Some words are spelt correctly and others are phonetically plausible.

Lesson Planning

Putting all of their knowledge of animals, their habitats and how they adapt to their environments, children design and make their own animal to live in one of the habitats looked at.

Children will:

  • Sort animals according to where they live.
  • Create their own animal and think about where it might live.
  • Use saltdough to mould and create an animal.

Provided Resources

  • Animal pictures one for each child
  • Saltdough recipe and instructions

You Will Need

  • Pre-made saltdough
  • Paints for when the saltdough has dried
  • Labels to write names of new animals

Weblinks

There are no weblinks needed for this session.

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