Animal Habitats: Match the Animal

Four habitat pictures fill the top of this 1st grade page, each with a big letter: A is a rainforest of tall trunks and long leaves, B is a savanna with dry grass under a flat-topped tree and a hot sun, C is a pond with cattails and a lily pad, and D is an ocean with seaweed and bubbles. Below them eight animal cards each have an empty box. The child writes the letter of the habitat where the animal lives. On the sheet shown the animals are a lion, a beaver, a whale, a toucan, an octopus, a parrot, a dragonfly and a gorilla.

A habitat is the place that gives an animal what it needs, and first graders begin with the big, easy to picture ones. The pictures carry the clues: water for the octopus and whale, a pond for the dragonfly and beaver, trees for the birds and the ape, open grassland for the lion. Not every habitat gets the same number of animals; on this sheet three animals live in the rainforest and only the lion on the savanna, so children cannot fill in the letters by sharing them out evenly.

One sheet, eight letters. Children who know a whale as a fish or a gorilla as a monkey still reach the right letter; correct the name afterwards. This is the base page of the animal habitats family; its faces cover animal homes, the animal that does not belong, adaptations, what animals need and a habitat report. In NGSS terms it supports the idea that animals live where their needs are met.