Habitat Award – Helping Hands

Habitat is a great Helping Hands award to teach kids more about the amazing world God has created. It is an optional award. As half of my Helping Hands had already earned the required Environmentalist Award, I substituted Environmentalist with Habitat this year. Although most Helping Hands awards take my club multiple meetings to complete, I found Habitat to be a faster award, and we completed it in a single meeting.

Home Sweet Habitat

Fulfills Requirement #1

I introduced our topic with the youtube video Home Sweet Habitat by Crash Course Kids. This fun video does a great job covering the basics of what habitats are and why they are important.

Habitat Hunt

Fulfills Requirements #2,3,4

Once we knew what habitats are and what our animal friends will need for their homes, we headed outside. Our club is very fortunate – our church has a huge yard with lots of interesting trees. I’m sure more than one squirrel happily lives in our church habitat! I gave each helping hand a habitat hunt page and a pencil and we started our scavenger hunt. (The printable is at the end of this post.)

Habitat Game

Fulfills Requirement #1

For our game, I used the Animal Homes Bingo Cards and Habitat Posters from SparkleBox. Before the meeting, I hid animal cards around the room. The kids searched for the animals and added them to their correct homes. As the kids matched the animals and homes, we discussed which home was most ideal for that animal. Note: This printable is from the UK, and a few of the terms aren’t well-known here in the US. Second Note: I also use this game in Busy Bees when we earn the Friend of Animals Award.

Habitat Creation

Fulfills Requirements #5, 7, 8, 9

Time to pull out the play dough! My favorite play dough recipe can be found here. I made several batches of play dough in blue, green, brown, and colorless (whiteish that can be sand/snow/etc). Obviously, you could also buy play-doh. I brought my Animal Toobs (Wild Toob, Zoo Babies, Desert, Great Lakes, and Antarctica) and some pipe cleaners to be turned into trees, cacti, and whatever else the kids dreamed up. The kids could choose whatever habitat they wanted to build. After they built their habitat (and possibly a second and third!), we discussed the following:

• On which day did God create your habitat?
• Describe what you think the habitat of heaven will be like.

Bible Time

Fulfills Requirements #6, 7

Look up the following bible verses and discuss:

• Genesis 1:9-13 (Habitats at Creation)
• Isaiah 65:17-25 (Habitat of Heaven)
• Revelation 22:1-5 (Habitat of Heaven)

Extra Time

We had a second video about habitats from Discovery Education to watch just in case we had time. This six minute video showcases gorgeous videos of animals in their natural habitats. It does use the word “evolve” twice. (But not evolution – preview first to see if it will fit your club’s needs.)

Special thanks to my newest pathfinder for creating and sharing all of the play dough habitat examples in this post!

If you use these ideas, could you do me a favor and come back and comment about how they worked for your club? I’d love to hear about your experience.