Teaching science in elementary school is crucial for nurturing young minds. But as educators, finding the time and resources to create engaging lessons can be a challenge. That's where this podcast comes in.

Welcome to Naturally Teaching Elementary Science, the show dedicated to supporting elementary teachers in their quest to bring authentic and place-based science experiences to their classroom. I'm Victoria Zablocki, a certified elementary teacher turned outdoor educator. With over a decade of experience coaching teachers on effective science teaching methods, I'm passionate about making science accessible, understandable, and fun for educators and students alike.

Join me as we explore strategies for teaching science in elementary school with practical teaching tips, insightful interviews, picture book reviews, and more. Whether you've taught for a long time or just started your teaching journey, this podcast is your trusty resource for enhancing your science curriculum. So let's grow together.

Hi everybody, welcome back to the Naturally Teaching Elementary Science Podcast. My name is Victoria Zablocki and I'm your host. We're to the point in the year that fall is starting to fade and winter signs are starting to emerge and you and your students may have noticed that some animals have disappeared.

Where have all the frogs, turtles, and chipmunks gone? Well, it's that time of the year where animals are getting ready for winter, and one of the most talked about methods is hibernation. It's also one of the most misunderstood winter adaptations.

And in this episode, I hope to help set the record straight, as well as provide you with activity ideas all about animals sleeping through winter.  We're going to talk through hibernation and people's misunderstanding with the term.

[1:46]

So I'm going to start with a science snippet today about hibernation and dormancy. So hibernation in animals is somewhat of a complex subject and is often used as a blanket term for any animal that sleeps during the winter. There are actually several terms for sleeping during the winter, with the true blanket term being dormancy. Dormancy is when an organism reduces its internal happenings to the lowest level possible, so that the organism uses the least amount of energy possible during that time period.

For animals, this means their metabolism is reduced, slowing down function such as heart rate, breathing and digestion. In plants, this means that their metabolism is reduced as well, resulting in stored food, shedding of unnecessary soft tissue like leaves, and strengthened roots and trunks. So let's start with the term hibernation and what that means.

Hibernation in science refers to mammals that experience such deep levels of dormancy that they appear to be dead. They can be picked up and jostled, or you can make loud noises around them and they won't wake up. Here in Michigan, we have four species of mammals that hibernate, including woodchucks, meadow jumping mice, brown bats, and 13-line ground squirrels.

As an example of how extreme the changes are inside of the body of a hibernating animal, according to SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, before hibernation, a woodchuck's average heart rate is 80 to 100 beats per minute, whereas while in hibernation, a woodchuck's average heart rate is 4 or 5 beats per minute. That's a crazy difference.

However, a lot of us were taught that bears were hibernators. While it's true that they sleep during the winter, they're not actually true hibernators. Instead, they enter a form of dormancy known to scientists as torpor. Torpor is similar to hibernation in the sense that the animal's metabolic system slow dramatically, but this state is more flexible than hibernation.

The animals that enter torpor can sleep for extended periods of time, but can wake up, eat, drink, excrete waste, and in the case of bears, even give birth to babies. Some of the animals that enter torpor do it for shorter periods of time, like the Black-capped chickadee, which enters torpor each night there are extremely low temperatures in winter.

This allows them to forage all day and then use as little energy at night as possible, conserving their energy for survival during a time of scarcity and extreme temperatures. Dormancy in reptiles and amphibians looks a lot like hibernation, but with a few minor differences. Since reptiles and amphibians are cold-blooded, their metabolism is controlled by the surrounding temperatures.

So when they start getting cold, their metabolism slows down and they use less energy to power their breathing, heart rate, and other internal functions. And this is referred to by scientists as brumation. Passersby would look upon these animals and think they were dead, just like hibernating mammals.

In the fall, reptiles and amphibians make their way below the frost line in the ground, whether that be in the soil of the forest floor, mud under a pond, sediment in the river, or another location that puts them below the frost line. However, while brumating, if a reptile or amphibian experiences temperatures that are uncomfortable, either too warm or too cold, they can actually move up and down in the level of the substrate to adjust to be at a more comfortable temperature. There are a few exceptions where some reptiles can remain awake during the wintertime, and some amphibians can almost fully freeze and still survive. I'll talk more about that during the description for the fourth grade activity in this episode.

The last form of dormancy in animals is diapause. This is the way that invertebrates, or animals without backbones, sleep through the winter.

These critters are cold-blooded like reptiles and amphibians, so their metabolic rate is also dictated by their surroundings. Invertebrates either enter diapause in winter, migrate to a warmer location, or they die. Just like hibernation, torpor, and brumation, diapause is a state where metabolic functions are nearly shut off.

Insects and other invertebrates enter diapause during different life stages, so some do as eggs, others as larvae, some as pupae, and others as adults. And I'll talk more about that in the description for the third grade activity in this episode.

Okay, so now that we've gotten a little science background, let's get started with some wonderful animal dormancy activities.

My plan in this episode is to describe dormancy-related activities for grades K through 5. And for each activity, I'll share the Next Generation Science Standard that inspired that activity, as well as the way the activity relates to animal dormancy. And make sure that you listen through to the end of the episode, because even though I've paired these activities to particular standards, you may find yourself inspired to use a similar concept for your curriculum or even use the same activity for a different grade. So let's get into it.

[6:20]

For kindergarten, the Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled was K-LS1-1: use observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals including humans need to survive. So how does this relate to hibernation in animals?

Some animals enter dormancy to survive winter because they can't get what they need during the wintertime. So instead, they just sleep during the winter. So staying active during winter requires a lot of energy, and some animals just can't get enough food on a regular basis to be able to sustain the level of energy required to stay awake.

So to be able to help demonstrate that concept, you're going to give your kindergartners an exploration opportunity while also allowing them to role play. So begin the lesson by sharing a list of animals that sleep through the winter, and allow your students to pick what kind of animal they want to pretend to be. Some examples could be chipmunks, woodchucks, bears, skunks, snakes, turtles, lizards, frogs, toads, salamanders, butterflies, caterpillars, ladybugs, and there are so many more.

By giving them the chance to pick their animals, you're giving them some autonomy with choice, and hopefully that will help them be more invested in this learning activity. So once they've chosen an animal to pretend to be, go outside to an exploration space and remind them of the boundaries they can explore in. Use natural boundaries such as a fence line, a tree line, woodchips, a sidewalk, etc.

And after you've reminded them of the boundaries, have them group together for directions. Their job is to explore the space looking for the needs of their animal. Review what the needs of animals are, including food, water, shelter, and space, and tell them that you're going to set a timer, and that's going to represent the fall season.

Once the timer goes off, it'll be winter and they'll lay down and sleep in or near their shelter. So give them 10 minutes or so to explore the space looking for food, water, shelter, and space. And when the timer goes off, remind them to go to sleep in or near their shelter.

While your students are, “sleeping” tell them that their animals sleep all winter and barely move when they're in their dormancy state. If you want to add a little silliness to their role-playing experience, tell them that you're going to come around and try to make them wake up and move, and you'll say things to them and make loud noises, but you won't touch them. Then walk around and visit each student to make noises and try to get them to wake up.

They'll think it's hilarious, and you'll get to see just how well your students can focus on trying to best you. It's awesome, their concentration during this sort of activity. Once you've visited everyone, have your students find a partner and share their food, water, shelter, and space that they found while exploring.

[8:56]

For first grade, the Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled was 1-LS1-2: read texts and use media to determine patterns in behavior of parents and offspring that help offspring survive. So how does this relate to hibernation in animals?

The adaptation to enter a form of dormancy to survive winter is an innate characteristic or one that is passed from adult to young through their genetics and happens automatically. So the animals that hibernate, torpor, brumate, or enter diapause do it automatically without thinking about it thanks to their genetic code. A lot of them do something to prepare for their long sleep, including eating a bunch of food to put on excess weight to burn through over winter, or gathering with a bunch of other individuals to maintain body heat.

These preparations are also innate behaviors that are passed from parent to young. So as an activity that you can do to demonstrate preparation for sleep that's automatically passed from adult to young, you're going to give your students a taste of some of that pre-sleep preparations with an ambulatory or movement cube walk. So you can put together a di that has six different animals and six different sleep preparations on the faces, or you could visit my Teachers Pay Teachers Store and snag the one from there.

You could include animals and preparations such as woodchuck who puts on fat, and then they could rub their bellies if they roll that animal. A chipmunk who gathers food in their cheeks, and they could blow up their cheeks like they have a bunch of food in there. Garter snakes group together, you could have the whole class group up nice and snug in a group on the sidewalk.

Turtles, they move into the mud, so you could have them pretend to dig the ground if they roll a turtle. Brown bats, they find a cave to hibernate, so you could have them pretend to fly if they roll the bat.

And wood frogs turn to frogsicles, so you could have them shiver if they roll the frog. When your di is ready, have your class go outside for a walk. Explain that they'll be rolling the di and acting out something these animals do to get ready for their long winter sleep.

Have the students roll the di one at a time, and then everyone in the class acts out that sleep preparation. Try to stay organized with who has rolled and who hasn't. So consider using class numbers if each of your students was assigned one at the beginning of the year.

When I used to do this style of walk, I used to have the students walk in a line, and then the first person in line rolls the di, and then they would run to the back of the group. However, with the examples that I listed above, you would have kiddos leaving the line to group together for snakes, and then your line would be all jumbled up. So that wouldn't work as well trying to keep everybody organized and make sure everyone gets a turn.

Once you have your system down, make sure each child gets to roll the die. It's a really big bummer if you were promised you got to roll the die and then you didn't. So try to be really conscious about making sure everyone gets a turn.

And the kinesthetic movements associated with each animal will provide your students a whole body learning experience and will help them recall the information easier at a later date. So that's one great benefit of this style of teaching. After having everyone roll the di, have a class discussion about whether or not they think that baby animals would do these things too.

So bring it back to human babies if you wanted during your discussion, and how they start rolling and crawling all on their own. Typically, parents don't get down on the floor and roll all over the place to try to show them. Sometimes they do, but it's something innate that they will do on their own.

And the actions from the di are things that animals do on their own because their parents did it, and it helped them survive, so it's stuck in their genetics.

[12:35]

The Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled for second grade was 2-LS2-2: develop a simple model that mimics the function of an animal in dispersing seeds or pollinating plants.

So how does this relate to hibernation in animals? Chipmunks are an example of an animal that torpors during the winter for survival. They gather seeds and other plant parts and bring them into their burrow during the fall so that when they wake up to go to the bathroom during the winter, they'll have food underground with them that they can eat without having to leave the burrow.

If they don't eat all of their food, then the seeds could end up sprouting into new plants, successfully moving a seed from one location to another. So a little natural history real quick about eastern chipmunks. They have an interesting adaptation that allows them to be more efficient in their food gathering abilities, which is the fact that they actually have fur on the inside of their cheek pouches.

And this helps protect their cheek pouches from getting cuts while collecting food, an essential job for year-round survival. So to help illustrate the benefit of food pouches, put together a relay race for your students. I recently came across an article that referred to chipmunk cheeks as shopping bags and I think that's a great comparison.

If you can find small reusable shopping bags for this activity, that would be a great way to reinforce the benefit of cheek pouches to your students in a metaphorical way. I found packs of two small reusable shopping bags from the Dollar Tree that I've used for free play and those would be perfect for this activity. And I'll make sure to put the link in the show notes if you're interested.

To set up for this relay race, create a starting line using either a rope or natural boundaries like a sidewalk or a trail. Then put obstacles in an open area like a grassy patch or a soccer field. Things like cones to weave in and out of like trees in the forest.

A section that a student or a paraprofessional acts like a predator trying to tag the students. A fabric tunnel or a cardboard box to act as a log to crawl through or hide behind. Or you could even organize your relay race to include a real log.

Poly spots to jump on like stumps in the forest. And then finally a location with food. You could use something biodegradable to act as your food such as feed corn.

Or you could use poker chips sprinkled in the grass. If you can, try to coordinate the color poker chips that you place in the field with the shopping bags that you'll pass out to your students. Once you're set up, have your students walk through the obstacles with you so that you can share what they do at each spot.

Let them know that if they get tagged by the predator, they have to go back to the beginning of the relay race and start over. Then you're gonna break them up into six teams of four or five and have each team select a secret “burrow” behind the start line so that it's outside the boundaries of the obstacle course. So they should turn and face away from the obstacle course to find a place for a burrow.

Then hand each team a reusable shopping bag. Their job is to go through all of the obstacles one at a time, collect a certain number of pieces of food of the color of their shopping bag, if you color coordinated. You could have them collect like five and then put them in their shopping bag, go back through the obstacles and place the food well hidden in their “burrow” that they agreed upon.

When they get back to their burrow, they can't get help from their teammates to remember where their burrow is. Because it's on them to remember and to place their food in the correct location. If they can't remember, then have them place their food in whatever location close by that looks like it will keep their food safest.

When they've cached their food or placed it in their burrow, they run their shopping bag back to the first person in line who can begin, and then they sit down at the back of the group to indicate that they've finished, and they're gonna face away from the burrow and face towards the relay race space. Once they've been debriefed on their mission and they have all their directions, have them line up, give each group their bags, and then let the first person go. As you watch the kiddos keep an eye out for tagged chipmunks as well as friendly chipmunks trying to help each other find their burrow.

Remind them that they have to remember on their own where their food is supposed to go and if they can't remember they can place it somewhere that looks safe. Once everyone has completed the relay race, have the group go to their burrow together and put all of their food in their shopping bag and return to the starting line. Ask them, did all of their chipmunks remember where their food was supposed to go?

Are they missing anyone's food? Did they end up with food of a different color from a different group? Sometimes chipmunks have to put food in places other than their burrow.

Sometimes they end up afraid of being eaten and so they quickly bury food in a different location or they may place food in multiple locations in case another squirrel comes along and finds their main cache. And when this happens, sometimes food gets lost in the shuffle and sprouts new plants from forgotten seeds. So that's why it's important for them to not help their friends find the burrow so that it can demonstrate how chipmunks might use other locations.

And then when you're all complete, don't forget to have them collect any random poker chips that may have gotten cached in the locations other than their burrows. That will help maintain your outdoor learning equipment as well as protect the local wildlife.

[17:34]

The Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled for third grade is 3-LS1-1: develop models to describe that organisms have unique and diverse life cycles, but all have in common birth, growth, reproduction, and death. So how does this relate to hibernation in animals? Insects enter diapause at different life stages to survive winter.

So some insects like praying mantises lay eggs in the fall, and then the species continues when the eggs hatch in the spring. Others like the famous woolly bear caterpillar enter diapause in their larval stage, and then they pupate in the spring. Some spend the winter in their pupa stage like the Cecropia moth, and emerge as an adult in the spring.

And others spend the winter as an adult, like the Mourning cloak butterfly who enters diapause under bark. So for this activity, I suggest starting with the book Not A Buzz to be Found: Insects in Winter by Linda Glaser. And I'll make sure to put that link in the show notes.

And in the book, Glaser shares insects surviving winter by migrating or sleeping in various life stages. She shares insects that lay eggs to perpetuate their species, including praying mantises and field crickets. She shares how insects survive the winter in their larval or nymph stages, such as woolly bear caterpillar, the gull fly, and the common pond hawk dragonfly.

She also mentions the black swallowtail butterfly as an example of an insect that survives the winter in their pupa stage. And surprisingly, Glaser mentions multiple insects that survive winter as adults, including ladybird beetles, aka ladybugs, Mourning cloak butterflies, ants, and bald-faced hornet queens. So for this life cycle activity, grab craft materials and clean recyclables and let your students enjoy creating a model of one of the insects from the book, the life stage they sleep in, and where they sleep all winter.

Have them include details such as where they are in relation to the ground and where the snow is. If a 3D model is not really attainable, either due to storage or material constraints, you could have them create a 2D model with liftable flaps and different layers to show all the different details. Once they've created their models, have a gallery walk in your class so that everyone can see everyone else's interpretation of the insects and their sleeping grounds.

Provide your students a survey so that they can keep track of how many insect eggs, larva, pupa, and adults were constructed in their class. And then consider putting them on public display, like in the hallway near your classroom, or ask your librarian if you could put their models on the bookshelves as a celebration of their hard work.

[20:01]

The Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled for fourth grade was 4-LS1-1: construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction. So how does this relate to hibernation in animals? Some animals have to do some pretty amazing magic to be able to enter their dormant state.

And that's thanks to the internal structures that automatically help them. Wood frogs, as I mentioned before, are an example of an amphibian that can nearly freeze and still survive winter. In the fall, they make their way into the leaf litter, and then their liver produces a lot of glucose, which keeps their cells from freezing.

So for this activity, put together stations for different animals and the different body parts that help them during dormancy to survive winter. You could do this a few different ways. You could prepare matching puzzles where one side is a picture of the animal, and then the other side would be the body part that helps the animal survive sleeping through the winter.

And then the way they affix together will help your student self-correct the body part to the correct animal. Another way would be to prepare a matching game where you have all cards the same size with a picture of the animals on their own cards, and then the body part that helps them survive. And then you could have coordinating color borders around the animal picture and the body part so that it's self-correcting.

Another possibility would be to have pictures of the animals on their own cards and the body parts on their own cards and simply allow your students to sort. Some adaptations are used by multiple animals and could be placed with many of your pictures. This one's a little harder to make self-correcting, but it does open up the opportunity for more discussion than the other two options.

So some animals and body parts to consider including could be turtles and their cloaca that they use for breathing in the mud, wood frogs and their livers that create an abundance of glucose; chipmunks, their furry cheeks for gathering food safely; brown bats, they use fat stores for energy while they hibernate; skunks have paws that they use to plug up their dent entrance before they go to sleep; woodchucks have special paws for digging burrows for sleeping; bears who have kidneys that recycle urea into proteins to help keep muscles healthy; garter snakes who have special skin that can absorb moisture while they sleep; ladybugs who use spiracles or tiny openings in the thorax and abdomen that can bring air into their bodies while they sleep; and woolly bear caterpillars that have setae or the bristles all over their bodies that help the insect freeze in a controlled way protecting the organs.

[22:36]

So the Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled for fifth grade is 5-ESS1-2: represent data in graphical displays to reveal patterns of daily changes in length and direction of shadows, day and night, and the seasonal appearance of some stars in the night sky. So how does this relate to hibernation in animals?

The sign from nature that animals should enter their dormant state is actually the number of hours of daylight. So as the year pushes on, the hours of daylight decrease and the animals and plants take notice. So for this concept, I suggest collecting data from fall to spring.

The data points that you'll want to collect are the sunrise and sunset times, how many hours of day and night that translates to, and then select three animals that your class commonly sees around your school that you know go dormant during the winter. So here in Michigan, I would look for Eastern chipmunks, Eastern American toads, and ladybugs. Starting with the autumnal equinox in September, keep track of the sunrise and sunset times, and then also which days you see each of those animals.

It would work out well to select a day of the week that you can commit to tracking the sunrise and sunset times and spending about 10 to 15 minutes observing through the window or quietly outside to see if you spot any of your three animals. But the three animals that I would choose for Michigan, we would have to go outside since the toad and ladybugs are easier to find up close, and looking through a window would be really challenging. If you noticed, my examples of Eastern chipmunk, Eastern American toad and ladybugs crossed three different groups of animals.

It's likely that they'll go into dormancy at different times, so it would create an interesting conversation after we collect all our data. So after you've chosen your animals, you've started to collect the data, continue collecting that data weekly all the way until the spring equinox.

By collecting data over time, your students will have enough data points to determine roughly when the animals disappear for the winter. You may have a week where you don't see any of your animals, and then you see them the following week. So in theory, they hadn't gone to sleep yet.

But with more data points, you can see a true pattern and have a better analysis of what that data can mean. So if you choose to collect data all the way through the spring equinox, you'll have probably about three months where you and your students won't see any of your animals. But it may surprise you and your students as to when you start seeing them come out of their dormancy, reinforcing that the hours of daylight truly affect animals and their patterns.

So in a nutshell, today we covered six different dormancy activities for elementary teachers and homeschool groups. For kindergarten, we talked about an exploration opportunity while also role playing, where your students got to pretend to be animals that sleep during the winter, foraging for food, water, shelter, and space, and then they got to pretend to be asleep. For first grade, we talked about putting together a movement cube where your students got to experience preparations for animals that went to sleep.

For second grade, we talked about creating a relay race for chipmunks preparing to go down to sleep for winter. For third grade, we talked about creating models to represent different life stages insects go into diapause for the winter. For fourth grade, we talked about creating stations that would help your students pair up animals and the different body parts that help them go into their long winter sleep.

For fifth grade, we talked about collecting data for sunrise and sunset times, how many hours of day and night that translates to, and then three different animals that your class commonly sees. And don't forget, if you're looking for an already made for you movement di, check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store and you'll be able to find one there. I'll also have a link for it in the show notes.

And I wanna thank you for taking time to listen today. I know you're busy and I truly appreciate the time you take to tune in. If you have any questions, wonderings, or activities that you use to talk about hibernation in animals, get a hold of me on Instagram at Naturally.Teaching or you can email me at victoria@naturallyteaching.com. And don't forget to check out the show notes for this episode at naturallyteaching.com/episode29.

Thanks again for joining me today and until next time, keep exploring, keep learning, and keep Naturally Teaching.

Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of the Naturally Teaching Elementary Science Podcast. I hope you found it informative, inspiring, and full of actionable insights to enhance your science teaching journey. Connect with me on social media for more updates, science tidbits, and additional resources.

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