Adaptations - Beavers [Not in Hands-On Nature]

Focus: The beaver modifies its habitat to suit its needs, and it has many adaptations for life in its watery environment.

For Background and Activities, please see the Coordinator's binder.

Puppets (Beaver, Blue Jay, Fox, Maple Tree)

Materials Checklist
Bein' a Beaver (piece of fur or fur clothing, picture of large-size lungs, swim flippers, paddle, mask made from paper bowl, stick, cotton balls or earmuffs, clothespin or swim nose plug, goggles, combs)
Slide Show (slide show, projector, screen, beaver sticks) Living the Life of a Beaver (long carrots, chocolate coated pretzel sticks, napkins, beaver skull, beaver sticks, beaver pelt, hand lenses)
Build a Lodge and Dam (brown play dough, twigs or pretzel sticks, trays or pieces of cardboard, two 10' sections of plastic rain gutter)
Beaver Pond Search (Beaver Pond Search cards, clipboards, paper, pencils)
Beaver Puppet Show (puppets, script, small sticks, pitcher of water, empty bowl)
Mapping a Beaver Pond (5/6 ELF) (beaver pond field sheet, beaver pond outline, pencils, colored pencils, clipboards, tape measures, compass)

Supplementary Reference Materials (Slide show scripts, Grades K-2, Grades 3-6; Beaver Adaptations for Swimming or On Land; Beaver Hunt cards; Beaver Lodge Illustration; 5/6 ELF Activity: Mapping a Beaver Pond)

Additional Reading/Resources
Lily Pond: Four Years with a Family of Beavers, Hope Ryden, New York: William Morrow, 1989.
Wild Mammals of New England, Alfred Godin, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.
Beavers and Other Pond Dwellers, Eleanor Graves, ed., USA: Time-Life Films, 1977.
Beaversprite, Dorothy Richards, San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1977.
The World of the Beaver, Leonard Lee Rue III, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1964.
The Encyclopedia of Mammals, David Macdonald, New York: Facts On File Publications, 1984.

ELF Notes - Template for newsletter on Beavers (coming soon)
* * Word document ** pdf file

Teaching suggestions
You could divide activities into two stations: a touch and feel station with the skull, beaver sticks, pelt, and a food station with the carrots and choco-dipped pretzels.

Branch Brunch
Dip large pretzels in melted chocolate and then cool to harden – the kids can chew off the chocolate.

Build a Lodge and Dam Use unused large pizza boxes or rounds as the base for your construction. You can send home a copy of the lodge drawing with children and have them color it, or they can build an exterior flap of brown paper and small sticks glued to cardboard that can flip up to expose the happy family of beavers inside.

Extension
On a long, hot field trip to a stream, you could have kids try to build their own dam the way beavers do it!

Beaver Fun Facts

A beaver can cut down a three-inch tree in less than ten minutes.
Beavers don't direct the way their trees fall, but most trees tend to fall toward the water because they have more branches on the side that faces open water.
In an average winter, a family of nine beavers may need as much as a ton of bark in order to survive.
If you were a pair of beavers, it would take you about two nights to build a dam two feet high and twelve feet long. A dam can be anywhere from 2 to 12 feet high and can be as long as 2,000 feet!
Branches that beavers use to build their dams often have no bark. This is because they use the bark for food as they build the dam.
If you were to make a large hole in a beaver dam, the beavers would go scrambling to repair it. The sound of running water (even in a bathtub) will cause a beaver to start to build a dam.

Learning Goals

Concepts/Ideas:

• Beavers have physical and behavioral adaptations that allow them to move about in and out of water in their wetland habitat.
• Beavers cut trees and branches by gnawing to obtain food and building materials for dams and lodges.
• Beavers change the areas they inhabit by cutting trees, building dams, and creating ponds, making it possible for them to access and transport food and building materials and to establish a protected habitat.

Vocabulary:
adaptations, habitat, beaver, rodent, prey, incisors, valves, guard hairs, undercoat, forage, cambium, dam, lodge (definitions)

Skills:

• Identifying through observation, active listening, and discussion some of the special adaptations that beavers have that help them to survive in wetland habitats.
• Experiencing through role-playing some of the activities that beavers must accomplish in order to survive.
• Observing and recording signs of beaver activity and impacts on habitat at a beaver pond.

Grade Expectations:
Grades PK-K (S30, S38) Beavers are living animals that require food, water and shelter to survive. They eat parts of trees and branches for food and use branches to build a home.

Grades 1-2 (S30, S38) Beavers are mammals. Beavers have body parts that enable them to get food and water and to build a shelter so that they can survive and raise young in the places they live. Beavers depend on plants for food and shelter.

Grades 3-4 (S30, S38) Beavers have physical and behavioral characteristics that protect them and enable them to get what they need to survive in their environment.

Grades 5-6 (S30, S38) Beavers' physical and behavioral adaptations enable them to transport building materials and food, build shelters and dams and establish a protected habitat.

Return to October or May ELF.