Habitats - Snug in the Snow

Focus: Many animals that are active in winter find warmth, protection, and even food beneath a blanket of snow.

Puppets (Marsha Mouse, Marvin Mouse (wearing easily removable ear muffs, tail warmer, and scarf), Wilma Weasel (in white winter coat))

Materials Checklist
Puppet Show (puppets, script, white cardboard stage cut with slanting tunnel leading to a small chamber, baking sheet for rumbling noise)
Snow Critter Concentration (also called Snow Mammal Memory) (winter mural with removable flaps covering animal pictures, 2 of each kind)
Dioramas (small boxes, twigs, dried weeds, evergreen sprigs, white paper, cotton batting and/or Styrofoam to represent snow, clay or play dough)
Insulation Investigation (thermos of hot water, gelatin, plastic film canisters-2 per group, insulating materials such as newspaper, bubble wrap, Styrofoam peanuts, plastic or paper bags, hats, mittens fur, down vest, rubber bands, optional thermometers)
Mouse Houses (seeds or nuts)
Subnivean Survey (5/6 ELF) (duplicate pictures of 12 local mammals; numbered cards for pictures; tape; posterboard, white/black board, or winter mural; Subnivean Mammal Field Marks sheet)

Supplemental Reference Materials (Puppet Stage Diagram, Snow Mammal Memory cards, Snow Mammal Memory information sheet, 5/6 ELF Activity: Subnivean Survey, 5/6 ELF Activity: Additional Critter cards, 5/6 ELF Supplement: Subnivean Mammal Field Marks, Mural Template, How Layering Works, Some Inuit Words for Snow, Snug in the Snow Mammals ID take-home sheet)

Additional Reading/Resources
Stokes Guide to Nature in Winter, by Donald and Lillian Stokes, Little Brown, 1979.
Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival, by Bernd Heinrich, ECCO, 2003.
The Ecology of Insect Overwintering, by Simon R. Leather, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
ELF Corner: Winter Insects or A Christmas Tree for the Critters (pdf files)

ELF Notes - Template for newsletter on Snug in the Snow
* Word document * pdf file

For Younger Children
Many of the activities in VINS's new Small Wonders book can be used in ELF, too. To find appropriate activities for children aged 3-6, click here.

Teaching Suggestions
The focus is on animals that remain active in the winter – fur, feathers, and fat.

Puppet Show
A white cardboard display or project board works well as a stage.

Snow Mammal Memory Game (formerly called Snow Critter Concentration)
ELF now provides line drawings of 8 animals that remain active in the winter. Laminate your mural (you can use the snowy winter scene from January's Animals in Winter workshop). Attach 2 copies of each of the 8 animal pictures to your mural using painter's masking tape, looped. Then place dark-colored "post-its" over the animal pictures, so the covers can be pulled off and then replaced.

After a match is made, read (or let the child who made the match read) the information card provided that describes the critter's winter survival strategy.

If you are in a city environment, point out that many of the same small critters can be city dwellers, too. The white footed mouse, meadow vole, and shrew inhabit backyard lawns. Park spaces, especially if they are close to woods may provide habitat for red squirrels, weasels, and other animals that need more space.

You could tape up an odd number of animals, with a joker non-resident animal for an extra challenge.

Especially with younger children, you might prefer to make several sets of the cards and play this in small groups on tables so more children are actively involved at a time.

Dioramas
Cotton balls, batting, or sheep wool scraps are the least expensive, environmentally friendly materials to use for snow on the top of the box.

Here's a recipe for playdough that can be used in the dioramas: 4 cups flour, 1 cup salt, 8 tsp. cream of tartar, 4 cups water, 1 tablespoon cooking oil, food coloring as desired. Mix all ingredients in large saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until dough forms a sticky, lumpy ball around your spoon. Don't worry about the lumps! Cool; knead -- with extra flour if needed -- until smooth. Keeps well in fridge in airtight container.

Styrofoam cups make cool dioramas of subnivean tunnels.

For older students: before the workshop, ask pairs to research a common resident animal in winter. Then the diorama those teams make in ELF should reflect what they've learned.

Insulation Investigation
You may want to start with a discussion of how heat dissipates. Demonstrate by having a couple of students come up and feel a metal mixing bowl, desk, and the air over the bowl (all cool). Now pour 2 cups boiling water from a thermos into the bowl. Ask students to feel bowl, desk and air again (now hot). "Will the water keep on losing its heat until it turns into a little ice cube?" No, it will lose heat until it is the same temperature as the room – until equal. So, when you go outside in winter, your body will lose heat to the air and that is why you need insulation. (leads into gelatin experiment)

In the city, disturbed snow, plowed and piled in large banks, loses much of its insulating capacity and is not much help to small mammals because it is the air content of fluffy snow that makes it a good insulator. Ask your students, then, where do some of these small creatures who might be snug in the snow in the country end up in the city? Inside people's houses (mice, and less commonly, voles.) Or, they live in wilder urban spaces like parks or vacant lots.

Mix gelatin (plain works best) and pour in thermos while it is VERY HOT. As the students finish up their dioramas, a group leader can fill and cap up the canisters. Have students make some predictions before insulating one of their canisters and setting both outdoors. Each team should put their two canisters close to each other on top of the snow so they are exposed to similar conditions. Clear canisters are easiest to check. What types of insulation materials do animals use?

Order of Activities
You might want to rearrange the order of activities to do Snow Mammal Memory in small groups while waiting for Insulation Investigation to gel outside!

Extensions
You might want to discuss other properties of snow – not only insulation but also light and air permeability. Discuss how different properties of snow can be particularly challenging or helpful to different animals.

Briefly explain that other cultures that deal with snow a lot (including people in Greenland, Iceland, Siberia, Northern North American) have multiple words for different kinds of snow. Then take the children outside and ask them to look for different kinds of snow and come up with their own new words or phrases to describe it. You may want to show students that poster that notes Inuit words for different kinds of snow.

If you can locate a few of those long flexible cloth tubes, you might have kids slither through them pretending to be hungry mice or weasels. Turn off the lights and ask everyone to be quiet to simulate life under the snow. You could include a scent and a texture or two for kids to try to identify as they pass through the tunnel.

Learning Goals

Concepts/Ideas

• Snow protects small animals from severe cold weather and predators.
• Some small animals use under snow (subnivean) areas as winter habitat where they tunnel and find food, shelter and protection from predators.
• Snow is an effective insulator that can hold in warmth and protect from wind and cold.
• Animal holes and tunnels in the snow tell of winter subnivean activity.

Vocabulary: winter habitat, subnivean, predator, prey, weasel, vole, shrew, red squirrel, beaver, insulation (definitions)

Skills

• Discussing the benefits of snow for animals that are active in winter.
• Identifying through active listening some of the animals that spend their time in or under snow.
• Creating a model of winter homes of animals.
• Comparing and contrasting the insulating properties of snow and other materials.
• Observing outdoors places where animals have made tunnels under snow.

Grade Expectations:
Grades PK-K (S30) Snow provides a protected “home” for some kinds of small animals that are living and active during cold weather.

Grades 1-2 (S30) Some animals are made up of body parts that enable them to get the food water and air that they need to survive under a blanket of snow.

Grades 3-4 (S30, S35) Some kinds of small animals that live in cold climates have physical and behavioral adaptations that allow them to meet their needs for survival by tunneling under a layer of snow.

Grades 5-6 Snow in winter provides shelter and protection for small animals. Some kinds of small animals are adapted to survive in and use subnivean areas as winter habitat where they can find food, water, shelter and protection from predators.

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