Hole Homes
Level: Grades 1-3
(extensions for grades 4-6)
Subjects:. Science, Language Arts,
Geography, (History)
Process: Through
observation, comparison, and evaluation of a habitat,
students make predictions regarding appearances of animal
homes.
Objectives: The student will.-
1. Generalize that the common needs for
food, water, and shelter are shared needs among all animals
including humans.
2. Identify basic components of one habitat
3. Discuss the relationship between habitat
and adaptations.
4. Describe why good habitat is necessary
for the health, safety, and continued life of all living
things.
Timeframe: 2 hours in field and 1
hour in class.
Skills: Comparing
similarities and differences, describing, evaluating,
inferring, observing, predicting, recording, role playing,
synthesizing, visualizing, working in small groups.
Vocabulary:. Adaptation, grass,
grassland, habitat, prairie, snag, soil, stump.
Materials: Drawing
supplies, Hole Homes drawing, "Hole Homes, Prairie
Homes' (below), (Extensions: clear jar, potting soil, grass
seeds--oat, bluegrass, and buffalo grass).
OVERVIEW
Between the tall mountains of the
west and the long winding Mississippi River, tall grasses blew
like waves on the oceans over a vast area. As early pioneers
traveled across this prairie land in covered wagons, they saw few
trees, suffered extreme heat in the summer and cold in the
winter, and continually searched for water. Because the prairie
country in the United States is a region of extremes it is a
challenge for all living things to survive. The plants and
animals that have always lived in this land of hot, cold, and
wind have adapted to the conditions.
Animals all over the world share the same needs
for survival-food, water, shelter, reproduction of their kind,
and space to move. Humans are no different and all adapt to
survive in the climates and habitats in which they live.
Animals that live in forests often build their
homes in tree trunks, under the bark of trees, on tree branches,
or in the stumps and snags of dead trees. Consider where an
animal might make a home if there were no trees and only tall
grass and the soil under its feet.
Procedure
1. Ask your students to verbally describe
their homes. What is basic to each home? List these on the
board in the front of the room for future discussion. Each
home has a place to prepare food and eat, a bed to sleep in,
and water to drink and clean with.
2. Review with your students the basic
needs of animals -food, water, shelter, space -- and compare
these needs to their own lifestyles. An animal's shelter
might not have strong walls like ours, so eating in the
shelter would not be safe. Discuss why. Likewise, a prairie
dog would not have the ability to bring plumbing into its
home for running water. Discuss where its water would come
from. The space around an animal's home is part of its
expanded home--sort of like a ranch or a farm or even our
cities. Discuss the need for expanded homes (i.e. getting
things we need, buying groceries, buying clothes, visiting
family). Ask:
Why is shelter important to prairie
dogs, coyotes, meadowlarks, and humans?
3. Locate a field free of trees and
buildings close to your school. Sit in the field with your
students and together describe what everyone sees. Then
describe a grassland -- a place where there are few trees,
the wind blows a lot, it is usually either very hot or very
cold, and it doesn't rain a lot. The land is covered with
grass higher than our heads while we are sitting down. When
the wind blows, all the grass moves at the same time. Birds
fly above the grass, and you can hear insects chirping and
frogs croaking during the spring, summer, and fall. The sky
has great big, white, fluffy clouds as far as you can see.
4. Ask your students to visualize the
grassland. Use the "Hole Homes, Prairie Homes"
drawing to help them "see."
Where might a prairie dog or a
coyote live in the grassland?
Where a meadowlark builds a nest?
What does your own home look like
compared to what a prairie animal's home could look like?
Introduce the concept of building a home
under ground.
5. Using the drawing "Hole Homes,
Prairie Homes" ask everyone to locate the homes of a
coyote, a prairie dog, a ground squirrel, and any other
animals living underground in the prairie. Describe the homes
that they locate in the drawing. How have these animals
adapted to living in the prairie? What happens to any living
thing that can not adapt to the habitat in which it finds
itself. Optional: Show your students
pictures of these animals and discuss their adaptations for
digging.
6. Ask your students to work in pairs and
carefully patrol the field looking for signs of animals
(including insects) living underground. Watch for small holes
that can be openings to underground tunnels and dens. As they
locate possible homes, have each pair sit and watch the hole
until everyone has located a home. After five minutes of
observing, ask your students to rejoin you and describe what
they saw.
7. In the classroom, have students examine
pictures from the October 1993 National Geographic article,
"The American Prairie" by Douglas H. Chadwick.
Compare their predictions from your field work with the
painting on the foldout, pages 104-106.
Assessment
1. Using pictures of a grassland and
experiences from the field work, have your, students make a
diorama or mural of a grassland. If making a diorama use a
soda pop box/ flat and pipe cleaner or clay animals. Ask them
to include at least one nest and one underground home.
2. Name three needs that humans have in
common with prairie dogs.
Extensions
1. In an open space or natural area
that is basically undisturbed by development, search for
animal homes and discuss the variety of sites animals find
even without trees.
2. Discuss possible ways for early pioneers
to build homes in the land of no trees. Until trains were
able to cheaply bring lumber in from regions with forests,
people living in grasslands studied the examples of the
grassland animals. The tall grasses had very long roots in
the soil and held the soil together. What is a sod house?
Some soil in the grassland had clay in it and clay could be
turned into a brick. Everyone's communities varied and the
availability of the following will vary with the resources.
Locate a brick maker or a sod house builder for a
demonstration or visit an efficient underground home. These
are modern variations on pioneer attempts to create shelter
on the grasslands.
3. Buy several types of grass seed from a
nursery (oat, bluegrass, and buffalo grass) and grow them in
a clear jar with potting soil. Water when dry, keep in a
sunny location, and watch as the roots form and the grass
seeds grow. Through a period of several weeks, students will
observe the heights to which grasses can grow, the types of
flowers they produce, and the ability their roots have to
fill the soil and bind it together. After one or two months,
or when the roots fill most of the jar, pull the
grass/soil/roots clump out of the jar to observe what has
occurred. Consider how this can prevent erosion and how it
can make a sod roof for animals living underground. Also,
consider how effective it could be in sod homes for pioneers
living on the prairie.
4. Extension appropriate for grades 4-6.
Write for information from National Grasslands managers. Ask
for materials on the reasons for their existence, historical
material, and compare these grasslands that have been
protected by the U.S. Forest Service and other government
agencies to non-protected regions. Locate each on a map of
the United States and discuss the range of the grasslands now
compared to before pioneers settled and began ranching and
farming. Each is managed by a variety of agencies and you
will need to check within your state to locate an address.
Hole Homes, Prairie Homes
Resources
If your state isn't listed, call your
Department of Natural Resources and ask for grassland
information.
NATIONAL GRASSLANDS
Colorado: Pawnee National Grassland
and Comanche National Grassland
Kansas: Cimmaron National Grassland
Nebraska: Ogalala National Grassland
New Mexico: Kiowa National
Grassland, Rita Blanca National Grassland
North Dakota: Little Missouri
National Grassland, Sheyenne National Grassland
Oklahoma: Black Kettle National
Grassland
Oregon: Crooked River National
Grassland
South Dakota: Grand River National
Grassland, Cedar River National Grassland, Fort Pierre
National Grassland, Fall River National Grassland and Buffalo
Gap National Grassland
Texas: Rita Blanca National
Grassland, L.B.J. National Grassland and Caddo National
Grassland
Wyoming: Thunder Basin National
Grassland
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