Oh, Antelope!

 A healthy habitat includes a food source, clean water, shelter, and enough space to raise young. When any of these four requirements shift in availability, a population's ability to sustain itself is affected. The following game will emphasize three of these components and help students understand this relationship while also having lots of fun!

MATERIALS: Works best in larger groups (15+), a large area for running/tag, orange cones or other way to mark boundaries, brown, yellow, blue, and green construction paper, scissors, tape, extra premade headbands of each color

• Ask students to share their thoughts about what they need in order to grow into a healthy human adult. (Also a good opportunity to discuss wants vs. needs!) Do they think animals might have similar needs? How might an animal's habitat be similar or differ from humans?
• Students count off in numbers 1-4. All number ones go to one group, all twos go to another, all threes together, and all fours go to a separate group.
• Have students in group 1 use brown construction paper, scissors, and tape to create a headband for each student. Students in group 2 should use blue construction paper, group 3 should use yellow, and group 4 should use green. (Have extra headbands of each color premade before starting game.)
• Mark two boundary lines roughly 10 to 20 yards apart. Everyone from the "ones" group will stand behind one boundary line. Everyone from the "twos, threes, and fours" group will all stand behind the opposite line.
• Once students are behind their boundary lines, have them put on their created headbands. The brown "ones" group will then be known as Antelope. The blue "twos" group will be water, the yellow "threes" group will be savannah grass, and the green "fours" group will be shelter. (if preferred, students can also decorate their headbands to represent their assigned role)
• Remind students that the four requirements of a healthy habitat are water, food, shelter and space. During the game, we can assume that the antelope have enough space to be healthy because the boundaries are marked and that territory will be protected.
• Let them know that before the game starts, each "antelope" will need to turn their backs to the other students, and without looking at what resources are available, decide if they will be looking for water, food, or shelter. If they decide to look for food, the "antelope" will put their hands over their stomach. If they are looking for water, they will put their hands over their mouths. If they are looking for shelter, they will put their hands over their heads. Once the game starts, students must not change their resource need or which resource they are representing.
• At this point, all the "twos, threes, and fours" on the other side of the boundary line can switch headbands or choose from the extra premade headbands and decide which resource they would like to be. For example, if they choose a blue headband they will be the resource "water." They will also turn their backs to the "antelopes" on the other side.
• Once you see that all the "antelopes" have chosen a resource to look for and have their hand signals ready and all "resources" have their chosen headbands on and ready, you can begin counting down to three. On the count of three each antelope and resource will turn to look at each other making sure their hand signals are clear.
• When antelope turn to look at resources they will run toward the resource they have chosen and try to "tag" them. For example, an antelope who has their hands over their stomach have chosen to look for the resource "food or savannah grass" will run towards a student who has chosen to wear a yellow headband.
• If an "antelope" tags their needed resource, that resource then goes back to the antelope side of the boundary. Since that antelope was successful in meeting its needs, it was able to survive and have young, so the tagged resource will now become another antelope and puts a brown headband on from the premade pile.
• If an "antelope" is unable to tag a resource and meet its needs, the antelope "dies" and goes back to the earth, becoming a new resource. For example, if 5 antelopes chose to look for shelter, but there were only 2 shelter resources available, 3 antelopes will be unable to meet their needs and will fail to survive.
• Once that round is over, all antelopes will go back to their boundary line and choose a new resource to look for. All resources go back to their boundary line and can choose to represent a different resource from the previous round if they would like.
• At the beginning and end of each round, the teacher or facilitator will keep track of how many antelope survived and/or were born. Continue at a quick pace for 10-15 rounds.