The First Grade MARE curriculum explores what a habitat is, how animals and plants use adaptations to live in extreme environments, and some of the different forms of rocks that make a seashore. Students study live crayfish and become familiar with common rocky seashore life.
Order curriculum - Correlation to CA Standards ( 124k .pdf) |
Students learn about the rocky seashore as they enter the habitat through a simulated field trip using slides illustrating how organisms living there are adapted to survive among crashing waves and changing tides and how to escape being someone’s lunch. Students take turns acting out the adaptations of creatures living there as the teacher directs the action.
 Download the Slideshow (5.5M, Power Point)
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Students observe the properties of rocks and sand and make candy “sand” to investigate the forces of erosion. Students cycle through three hands-on activity stations looking closely at sand, gravel and beach drift that will eventually become sand and participate in a guided investigation to find out how the rising and falling tides “behave” differently in sand versus gravel. Students hide plastic seashore animals under sand, gravel and rocks and observe which substrate is safest when hit by thundering waves (buckets of water). |
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Students work in small groups to create a habitat for crayfish. They carefully observe and draw the crayfish’s external anatomy and describe their behavior to discover the ways a crayfish is adapted to live in a water home. |
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In this jigsaw activity, students work in small groups to teach each other about some important traits and adaptations of rocky seashore creatures. They participate in a game show and a 20-question guessing game to check for understanding. |
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| Tidepool Boogie focuses on eight different organisms representative of the diversity in this unique and rigorous habitat. Students listen to and talk about the song “Tidepool Boogie” and then work together in small groups to act out the organisms in the song. The class then stages a performance, complete with costumes. |
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Students widen the focus of their study of the rocky seashore habitat as they play Seashore Bingo and sort animal and seaweed pictures into the zones where the animals actually live on the shore. They then build a 3-D rocky seashore and place organisms in the correct tidal zones. Students work as individuals and in groups to create a Field Trip Guide for other classes to use when visiting their rocky seashore classroom. |
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