Habitats & Basic Needs
Identify that most living things live in habitats to which they are suited and describe how habitats provide for basic needs and how organisms depend on each other
What a learner can do afterwards
- Define a habitat as a place where an organism lives that provides what it needs
- Give examples of how specific habitats meet organisms' needs (e.g. pond provides water and food for frogs)
- Describe at least one way organisms in a habitat depend on each other (e.g. bees pollinate flowers, flowers feed bees)
The lesson
A habitat is a place where a living thing makes its home. A good habitat gives that living thing what it needs: food, water, air, and shelter. Habitats can be wet or dry, hot or cold, but each one fits the living things that call it home.
A pond is a habitat for a frog. It gives the frog water to swim in, bugs to eat, and plants to hide under. A frog could not get any of that in a dry desert.
A polar bear lives at the icy North Pole, not in a hot desert. Its thick white fur and layer of fat keep it warm and help it hide on snow while it hunts seals. In a desert there is no ice to hunt from, and that same fur would make the bear far too hot.
Living things in a habitat often help each other too. A bee visits a flower to drink its sweet nectar. As the bee moves, yellow pollen sticks to its legs and rubs off on the next flower, which helps that flower make seeds. The bee gets food, and the flower gets help growing.
When you look at any habitat, ask two questions: what does it give the living things there, and how do those living things help each other back?
A habitat gives living things what they need, and the living things in it often help each other too.
Watch it
Where it sits
Learn first
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.