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Description

A game all about how shrinking habitats affects the animals that are living in them

Resources

Groundsheets, blankets or hoops

Instructions

1. Gather everyone together and ask if everyone knows what a habitat is. A habitat is a place where plants, animals and microorganisms live. It could be a tree, a sand dune, a coral reef, or simply the wildflowers growing in the cracks of pavements.
2. Tell everyone there are lots of different types of habitats. There’s woodland, ocean, desert, rainforest, urban, coastal, pond and polar habitats. Can anyone think of animals or plants that might live in these habitats, or which habitat they live in?
3. Ask everyone how they think humans can impact animal and plant habitats. They can cause habitats to get destroyed or damaged, which is called habitat loss. Habitat loss is happening across the world, from shrinking rainforests to melting ice caps. Some of the main reasons habitats are lost can be when people farm too much, fish a lot, build more houses and cities, chop down too many trees, and when the weather changes a lot. These things make it hard for animals to find places to live.
4. Explain that you’ll be playing a game to show how hard it is for animals and plants when habitats are lost. They’ll all be on a blanket or groundsheet, but it’ll shrink, so they need to be careful not to fall off. The aim of the game is to be the team that keeps everyone on the blanket or groundsheet the longest.

5. Divide the group into three different habitat teams, such as rainforest, woodland and polar. Each team should choose different animals from their habitat that they can be.
6. Lay a blanket or groundsheet (or a set of hoops) on the floor and ask everyone to get on it. Ask everyone if they’ve lots of space in the habitat. If they can, people could move around.
7. Now, oh no, some of the habitat is being lost because people are chopping down trees. Fold the groundsheet or
blanket (or remove a hoop) to remove a quarter of the space. Encourage everyone to help their team to stay on the groundsheet. Ask everyone if they can still move around in the same way now that some of their habitat has disappeared. When someone can no longer t on the blanket or groundsheet, they’re out.
8. Next, uh oh, some more of the habitat is being lost as people are building more houses. Fold the groundsheet or
blanket to remove a quarter of the space.
9. Keep going and removing habitat due to different reasons, such as people littering, pollution, too much farming, too much fishing, someone’s building a road or climate change is happening, which means the Earth’s temperature is
getting hotter.
10. Eventually, there won’t be enough space for everyone to t on the blanket or groundsheet.
The team with most people left on the groundsheet at the end wins.

Tags

• earth Tribe
• game
• habitat
• Nature

Badge Links

• Earth Tribe - Nature help needed