sustaining life in the desert

We will be continuing our adventures into God's beautiful creation by studying more biomes and ecosystems.  Today, we began with the Desert.

opening activity: refresh and review

Since we had a break in our class, I wanted to warm up the students and refresh their memory of Psalm 95:1-6 that we memorized with hand motions last semester as well as review some of our vocabulary that we will continue to use throughout this semester.

Psalm 95:1-6 states, "Oh come, let us sing to the LORD.  Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!  Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving.  Let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise.  For the LORD is a great God and a great King above all gods.  In His hands are the depths of the Earth.  The heights of the mountains are His also.  The sea is His, for He made it.  And His hands formed the dry land.  Oh come, let us worship and bow down.  Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker."

manna moment

Exodus 17:6- "Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it and the people will drink."

This is what the LORD GOD told Moses while he was leading the Israelites out of Egypt and through the desert.  One of the main characteristics of a desert is its lack of water.  Consequently, the Israelites complained that they didn't have any water in the desert.  The LORD is a wonderful Father and a great Provider.  The Lord provided water from a rock in the desert so that His people could drink and be satisfied.  Just like the Israelites needed water in the desert, the plant and animal life in the desert need water and food for life as well.  Thankfully, God so ordered His creation with plants and animals to be able to withstand the extreme temperatures of the desert.  Just as the Lord provided for the Israelites in the desert and the animals and plants that live in the desert now, He will most assuredly provide for us.
In fact Jesus says in Matthew 6:33 to "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you".  If you are wondering what 'these things' are, you can read Matthew 6: 25-33.  He is saying that you don't have to worry about what you eat or what you will wear.  God the Father already knows we need these things and He will take care of it.  Being free from this worry, we can focus on seeking His Kingdom first in all that we do.

Where can we find deserts?

As a review of their geography, but also to learn where the deserts are in our world, we used this clever geography map.  The grayed areas are the places where the deserts are with the names of the different deserts around the world.  
The students, while we were talking about the different deserts, were free to color in the different deserts and trace the grayed names of the different deserts.

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Read Aloud:  Deserts by Cathryn Sill

I love this series of books about habitats.  The pages are simple and the pictures are wonderful.  They highlight a type of plant and animal on almost every page.  This book made note of the different ways the animal and/or plant is able to survive in the extreme biome of the desert.

To go along with the book I made this reading guide so that the students could review what they learned.
​You can find this Listening Guide here.

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Desert Biome Sheet

I like doing these Biome sheets because it pulls all the information that we learned about the biome with its animals and plants and places it all on one sheet for them to be able to quickly review.  This biome sheet comes with an extra page of animals and plants that can be cut and glued to the sheet.  They are also welcome to choose their own desert energy/food chain.
​You can find this Biome sheet here.