What Animals Need

Each row on this 1st grade page starts with an animal, followed by two food pictures under a Food heading and two home pictures under a Home heading. The child circles one food and one home for every animal. A line above reminds the class that every animal needs food and a home. On the sheet shown the animals are a beaver, a spider, a bird and a rabbit. The foods on offer are a mosquito, a leaf and a tuft of grass; the homes are a beaver lodge, a spider web, a nest and a burrow.

Needs is a first grade science idea: animals need food and shelter to survive, and they find them where they live. Circling two things per row makes children think about the same animal twice, what it eats, then where it sleeps, and the same pictures come back in different rows so a picture cannot be circled by habit. The spider and the bird both eat the insect, which surprises children who expect every animal to eat something different.

One sheet, four rows, eight circles. The right food and the right home do not sit in the same column every time: on the sheet shown the food is on the right in the first two rows and on the left in the last two, and the home goes the other way round. This face follows animal homes in the family and leads into the habitat report, where children name the animals and plants of one place.