Games

Conservation Concentration

Grassland - bluebird, big bluestem, common milkweed, monarch butterfly, garter snake, compass plant Wetland - cattail, soft rush, troublesome sedge, green darner, leopard frog, red-winged blackbird Woodland - white oak, wild turkey, gray squirrel, spring beauty, pill bug, chanterelles

Learn about midwest species and their habitats by playing Conservation Concentration. Each set of playing cards has six species typical of a habitat, woodland (see above), grassland, or wetland. Print and cut out the playing cards for each habitat, shuffle the cards and lay them face down in a rectangle. Students pick out two cards, and if they match, the cards are taking out of play. Continue until all the cards are paired up.

Optional. After students have completed a game, give each student a set of species information cards, so they can learn a bit more about the species that they learned to recognize.

Conservation Concentration Playing Cards

Grassland Species Information Cards

Wetland Species Information Cards

Woodland Species Information Cards

Conservation Connections

This works best after student have played Conservation Concentration and gotten the species cards.

Put all the cards, from all three habitats, face up. Then have students take turns finding connections between the species. Students place cards next to each other and say what the connection is. It can be color, it can be habitat, it can be about "eating", it can be about kinds of species. Any connection works, but they must be able to name or explain it. The only criteria for accepting a connection is that it is technically accurate, even if not necessarily meaningful. At each turn, a student can change another students connections as long as they can explain the change. At some point it may be necessary to use string or craft sticks or something similar to show the connections. Aim for every species being included in one big network of connections.

This is a cooperative game, so there are no individual winners. However, if they can connect all the species, the group is a winner.

This can be played multiple times with different groups of students coming up with different kinds of connections.