The environment in which animals live can directly affect their ability to survive. With man’s ever-expanding habitat, some animals are getting the short end of the stick when it comes to having a healthy place to live. You can challenge your students to examine how healthy their own worlds are for the wild animals that live alongside them.
As a class, keep a list of all the different types of animals you see over a two week period. As students see animals at home or in their neighborhoods, ask them to jot down what they saw. The next day in class, add any new animals to your list. You should take advantage of the natural opportunity for your students to learn new vocabulary for animals and birds.
Going over the list each day of the two weeks will also help cement that new vocabulary into their minds. Once you have your list, ask your students to examine whether the environments in which these animals live are healthy ones. They should look for and think about things like pollution, trash, food and water sources and places for the animals to live.
As a class, decide on a service project that you can do to help make the environment friendlier to wild animals. You may decide to have a cleanup day or make food or shelter available to the animals that you live with.
As an extension, encourage your students to think of other ways they can be kind to the animals around them.