River Small World Habitat Exploration

A few months ago my husband found a small turtle that we decided to keep as a pet. It has been a wonderful opportunity to learn about caring for an animal. Plus it’s been great for learning what is needed for different habitats. This river small world habitat is a great way to learn about life in and around the rivers.

Materials needed for a river small world habitat:

Dirt

Water

Grass

Sticks

Aluminum foil or heavy duty plastic

To create the river small world we first started by creating the river bed from the aluminum foil. I did a double layer of the foil to ensure that it was sturdy and wouldn’t leak if it got a small puncture.

I put the “river” in the middle of our plastic tub and then let the kids take total control of the rest of the project.

We did some brainstorming of things that would be needed in a river habitat. This is what they thought of:

Water

Rocks and small pebbles

Dirt

Grass

Trees

Sand

Fish (Jaida wanted real ones, I politely declined)

Sticks

Then they went out to the backyard to assemble the small world.

They ended up digging a hole in the yard (mental note to tell hubby to fill that in…) and gathering some of the weeds from the garden.

They also used some leaves from the random small trees that line our yard and picked up some small sticks from the burn pile.

After they filled in the sides of the river to create the river banks, they decided that the river needed a dam, so they started building one out of mud only discover that it needed more reinforcement.

They added some sticks to the dam to help hold it together and then filled the upper portion of the river. With some manipulation, they were able to get the dam to hold for a little while.

After that they were able to see a great example of erosion!

We didn’t have it on hand today, but you can add this river animal TOOB for more fun. We’ll be playing with this over the next few days and I’m excited to see what they’ll think of next!