Pre-k-2 Activities

South Carolina Aquarium Online Curriculum > Pre-k-2 Activities

Habitats

The South Carolina Aquarium, in partnership with teachers, has created this online curriculum for teachers to use with their students in the classroom. The curriculum theme for kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade is Habitats, a place where an organism lives. The activities teach concepts that build on this theme. All activities are based upon South Carolina Standards, and each activity contains background information, procedures, materials lists, standards addressed, assessments, curriculum extensions and resource lists. We hope teachers will enjoy this resource!

If you are a teacher planning to participate in our Habitats School Program, we recommend completing 3 activities before your program. Those activities include: Living Things, Water Wonders and Habitat Hop. The most important activity being Habitat Hop.

We have added at-home and virtual learning modifications to our recommended activities. Be sure to see how you can engage your students at-home and virtually with our activities!

The preschool activities follow the South Carolina Early Learning Standards and foster learning using movement and fun. We hope to add more preschool activities in the future so please come back and see what’s new! Thank you PNC Foundation for your support in creating these preschool lessons.

K-2nd Grade

Recommended Pre-visit Activity
♥ At-home and Virtual Options

Students classify a collection of living and non-living objects common to South Carolina to learn some of the characteristics of living things.

Recommended Pre-visit Activity
♥ At-home and Virtual Options

Students will participate in an activity in which they use their senses to explore the properties of water, determine why living things need water to survive and determine how water can collect in habitats for living things to use.

Recommended Pre-visit Activity
♥ At-home and Virtual Options

Students will learn about what a living thing needs in order to survive in a habitat as well as get acquainted with a pond and forest habitat. They will play a hopping game and see if their animal can find all of its needs to survive in its habitat.

Students will learn about what a living thing needs in order to survive in a habitat as well as get acquainted with different types of habitats.

Students will plant rice seeds and observe them for 2 weeks to see how different factors (lack of light, air, nutrients, water and space) affect their growth and development. Students will understand that plants need all of these things to survive.

The teacher will read aloud the book The Salamander Room by Anne Mazer and discuss it with the students. Students should consider what they would do to ensure a salamander would survive if they were to keep one as a pet. 

Students will observe living things around the school to see where they are found and determine what defines a habitat.

Students will use maps and pictures to learn that each region in South Carolina has different habitats. Students will then create dioramas to represent some of these habitats.

Students will participate in an activity in which they observe the sun as the prime energy source for the Earth, model the journey the Earth takes around the sun to understand the reason for seasons and investigate the effects seasons have on living things.

Recommended Post-visit Activity

Students will participate in an activity in which they collect litter around the school, sort and group the litter, graph their data and generate solutions to litter pollution.

Recommended Post-visit Activity

Students investigate how people have changed the environment around their school. They design an action project to improve some aspect of the habitats in their schoolyard or local community. 

Preschool

Participate in a scavenger hunt while exploring the Aquarium’s Great Ocean Tank (counting, colors, shapes and movements).

Students count animal body parts from zero to five. They will use hand motions to act out the animal while learning about numbers.

Students learn how different animals move. They will use their bodies to act out certain animals.

Students will learn about shapes by building plants and animals out of basic shapes.

Students will practice letter recognition while drawing South Carolina animals.