ScienceGrade 3
Why Do Animals Migrate or Hibernate? Seasonal Survival for Kids
Migration: traveling a long distance to reach better food or weather, then traveling back.
Learning Objective
Kids will be able to name and tell apart three real animal strategies for surviving a hard winter — migrating (traveling to a better place), hibernating (a deep, body-slowing sleep), and adapting in place (staying active but changing behavior or body) — with a real animal example for each (TEKS 3.12A).
What You'll Learn
- Hibernation: a deep winter sleep where heart rate, breathing, and body temperature all drop
- Adapting in place: staying active through winter by changing behavior (hiding food ahead of
- Bears are NOT true hibernators — their body temperature drops only a little and they can
Words to Know
- Migrate
- To travel a long way to a better place, then travel back later
- Monarch butterflies migrate to Mexico every fall
- Hibernate
- To go into a super deep sleep all winter where your body slows way down
- A groundhog hibernates in its burrow all winter
- Torpor
- A lighter winter sleep where you can still wake up fast if you need to
- A black bear goes into torpor, not true hibernation
- Adapt
- To change your body or your behavior to fit what's happening around you
- A snowshoe hare adapts by growing white fur for winter
Check What You Learned
Quick Quiz
1 / 4A monarch butterfly flies thousands of miles to Mexico every fall. What is this called?
Lesson Info
Grade 3
2026-10-20
Standards Alignment
- TEKS 3.12A
explore, illustrate, and predict how different animals, including humans, meet
- 3-LS4-3
construct an argument with evidence that in a particular habitat some
Keywords
3rd grade sciencescience for kidsanimalsmigratehibernateseasonalsurvivalkidstorporadaptTEKS 3.12A3-LS4-3
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