Time: 30-45 Minutes
Grades: K-6
The animals of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains have amazing adaptations to survive the frigid, snowy winters! In this field trip, students will learn about some of these animals and their survival techniques to beat the cold. Students will learn about migration, hibernation, brumation, warm/cold blooded, and more.
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Animal Adaptations to Winter:
The winters of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains can be intensely cold. In this virtual field trip, we'll explore how some of the animals that live here survive!
We will use skulls, skins, skeletons, pelts, full animal mounts, and pictures to learn about animals – both large and small. Your students will discover animals that use four major adaptation strategies to survive winter. In the class, we will introduce these strategies as “tough it out”, “get out”, “sleep it out”, and “wait it out”. Your students will be able to choose between two different animals within each strategy to learn about.
Some of the biological concepts we will discuss in this class are: hibernation, torpor, migration, brumation, warm-blooded, cold-blooded, herbivore, carnivore, omnivore, and more. This class includes mammals, birds, reptiles, and insects. The animals that are currently discussed in this class are: the gray wolf, bison, Northern saw-whet owl, monarch butterfly, black Bear, white-tailed prairie dog, common snapping turtle, prairie rattlesnake, and beaver! As with all programs, the content can be scaled up or down… depending on the age of your group.
Request a virtual field trip today and learn all about how these amazing animals have adapted to the intense winters of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains!