Students become “deer” and components of “habitat” in a physical activity. The activity is intended for students to grasp the concepts that everything in a natural system is interrelated. Environments are continually changing in a process of maintaining equilibria in natural systems.

Vocabulary: habitat, limiting factors, ecosystem, predator, prey, population, balance of nature, decompose

Objectives:
Students will be able to:
1) Identify and describe food, water, and shelter and essential components of habitat.
2) Describe the importance of good habitat for animals.
3) Define “limiting factors” and give examples.
4) Recognize that some fluctuations in wildlife populations are natural as ecological systems undergo a constant change.
5) Nature is never in “balance” but is constantly changing.

Background Information:
A variety of factors affect the ability of wildlife to successfully reproduce and to maintain their populations over time. Disease, weather, predator/prey, environmental pollution, and habitat destruction are contributing factors. Some are naturally caused as well as culturally induced. Limiting factors serve to prevent wildlife populations from reproducing in numbers greater than their habitat can support. An excess of limiting factors leads to threatening, endangering, and eliminating whole species of animals.
The most fundamental of life’s necessities for any animal is food, water, shelter, and space. Without these an animal can’t survive.

Materials:
1) Find and open area large enough for students to run. 50 x 50 feet is good.

2) Chart paper with a line graph. X/Y axis, year/number of deer

Procedure:
1) Review the essential things animals need to survive. (Food, water, shelter, space)
2) Mark two parallel lines in the playing area across from each other about fifty feet. Ask students to count off in fours. Have all of the one’s go to one lined area and the two’s, three’s and four’s go to the opposite lined area.
3) The one’s become deer. All deer need is good habitat in order to survive.
4) The two’s, three’s and four’s are food, water, and shelter—components of habitat.
5) The deer need to find food, water, and shelter in order to survive.

All students, deer or the environment, must symbolize food, water, or shelter.
When a deer is looking for food, it should clamp its hands over its stomach. When it is looking for water, it puts its hands over its mouth. When it is looking for shelter, it holds its hands together over its head.

6) A deer can choose to look for any of its needs during each round of the activity. The deer cannot change what it is looking for once it sees what is available. The deer can change only after each round.

7) The two’s, three’s, and four’s are food, water, and shelter—the environment. Each student gets to choose at the beginning of each round which component of the environment he or she will be offering the deer. The students depict which component they are in the same way the deer show what they are looking for.

8) The game starts with all players lined up on opposites lines. Deer on one side, environment on the other.

9) The facilitator begins the first round by asking all of the students to turn their back to each other and make their signs. The deer decide what they are looking for and the environment decide what they have to offer the deer.

10) Count one, two, three... each group of students turns around to face the opposite group, continuing to hold their signs. When the deer see the habitat they need, they run to it. Each deer must hold the sign they are looking for until getting to the habitat person with the same sign. Successful deer take the “food, water, or shelter” back to their side. This represents a successful and reproductive year for the deer. Any deer that fails to find its habitat component dies and becomes part of the environment and must go stand of the environment line.

11) The facilitator keeps track of the deer population before each round and records it on a line graph. Play the game for about 15 rounds.

12) At the end of the game, discuss the activity with the students. Discuss how the populations grew for several years and declined in other years. Discuss what are the contributing factors in the populations. Discuss the line graph with the students and have them interpret the data.