Learning about environments, survival, and fossil evidence is a highly anticipated unit with my students! In this post, I’ll share environments and survival science activities you can do with your third graders that will elevate your science lessons and engage your entire class! These investigations, activities, science experiments, and teaching slides are part of a complete Environments and Survival science unit included in my yearlong, third grade science curriculum.
This post will give you an overview of the environments and survival science activities that make up the unit and show how it can help you teach an in-depth environments and survival unit that covers all of the third grade NGSS. A detailed, scripted lesson plan is included in the unit that will guide you through ten different topics related to environments, survival, and fossil evidence. I’ve included high-engagement teaching slides, a student workbook, science experiments, STEM labs, and more that align to third grade NGSS, and many state science standards.
Environments and Survival Science Activities
In this post you’ll find activities and STEM labs to teach:
- Ways animals adapt to survive
- The difference between physical and behavioral adaptations
- Survival of individuals
- Forming groups to survive
- Survival in a changed environment
- Fossil evidence
- Types of fossils
- How fossils form
- The fossil record
- The geologic time scale
Explore Ways Animals Adapt to Survive
What are Physical Adaptations?
An adaptation can be physical or behavioral. Physical adaptations are how the plant or animal looks on the outside. Body parts like beaks, ears, feet, or wings, and body coverings like fur and scales are structural adaptations.
Plants also adapt. For example, plants that live in water, like mangroves, have long roots to hold them in place in the soil under the water. Their stems grow high above the water so their leaves can get sunlight. Visit this post to see how my students made models of water plant adaptations.
How Does a Bird’s Beak Adapt to the Food It Eats?
The following science activity asks students to explore how bird beaks are adapted to eating different kinds of food and how the shape of a beak gives clues to what the bird eats.
Procedure:
- Provide your students with a variety of materials to model and test different beak shapes.
- Place students in groups with tweezers, scissors, pliers, chopsticks, and straws to represent different beak shapes. Give each group small bowls (we used cupcake liners and a plastic cup) of lentils to represent seeds, marshmallows to represent meat, rice with small pieces of yarn to represent worms in the ground, and a small cup of water to represent nectar.
- Show students pictures of birds with a variety of beak shapes and ask, “Which of your tools does each beak look like? Have students match their tools with the beak they think represents its shape the best.
- Students use their beak tools to pick up, tear, pretend to drink, or crack the different foods then write down their observations explaining how each tool is like the beak they matched it to. Example: The straw is a lot like a hummingbird beak and is perfect for drinking nectar that is deep inside a flower.
What Are Behavioral Adaptations?
Behavioral adaptations are actions animals take to help them survive in their habitat. Hibernation and migration are examples of a behavioral adaptation. Some animals hibernate during the winter. Birds and some insects migrate to warmer climates during the winter.
Forming Groups to Survive
Forming groups to survive is another behavioral adaptation. When animals form groups, they can protect each other, share food, and help each other raise their young. During our environments and survival unit, students learn about animals that live in groups for survival and how variations in characteristics among some animals of the same species can provide advantages for surviving, finding mates, and reproducing.
Survival in a Changed Environment
Students also learn about the influence environment has on organisms. Students learn environmental factors that affect the physical traits and learned behaviors of different living things. Students build on this knowledge as they learn about ways environmental changes, diet, sunlight, and temperature, can affect the traits of plants and animals.
How Cliff Swallows Adapted When Their Environment Changed
Some animals respond to changes in their environment by hibernating, migrating, molting, and through other unique adaptations. Students read an interesting article about how cliff swallows adapted when dramatic changes to their habitat occur.
Cliff swallows article and activity cards
Next, students analyze graphs depicting how many cliff swallows thrive in the new environment and how many do not. Students use evidence to construct an explanation for how the variations in characteristics of cliff swallows provide advantages for survival.
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Environment, Survival and Fossil Evidence 3rd Grade Science BUNDLE
Original price was: $36.00.$28.00Current price is: $28.00.
Meet An Animal Behavioralist
During the unit, students get to meet an animal behavioralist whose job it is to study specific birds and how they adapt to changes in their surroundings.
Fossil Evidence of Past Environments
Through engaging lessons and vivid slides, hands-on investigations, and station activities, students explore fossil evidence of organisms and environments that existed long ago.
Environments and Survival Teaching Slides (source)
As students learn about fossils, they analyze and interpret fossil data, define major fossil types, and explain the process of fossilization.
Analyzing fossils lab sheet (source)
As students learn about environments and survival they also learn about the fossil record. They make models in a cup of the Geologic Time Scale using Play Doh and beads. We used straws to take a “cross sample” that represents the different geologic periods and the fossilized life layered inside them.
Books About Environments and Survival
Visit my collection of books about environments and survival, adaptations, and fossil evidence, on Amazon.
I hope you’ll check out this complete third grade science unit filled with environments and survival science activities. The 4-week lesson plans are carefully scripted, centering around a high engagement teaching PowerPoint. Learning targets, essential questions posters, vocabulary posters and much more are included. Step-by-step directions with pictures guide you through each lab investigation, activity and experiment.
Environments and survival unit learning targets & guiding questions
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