Our Environment Worksheet

Understanding our environment is one of the first big ideas in third grade life science. An environment is everything that surrounds a living thing — the land, the water, the weather, the plants, and the other animals nearby. Every habitat on Earth, from a dry desert to a shady forest, gives the living things there the food, water, and shelter they need to survive. This Our Environment Worksheet helps students name the major environments around them and explain how plants and animals depend on the places they call home.

This 3rd grade environments worksheet moves from vocabulary to reasoning in three short parts. In Part A, students read five clues and write the matching environment — desert, ocean, forest, wetland, or grassland — using a word bank that holds one extra word as a challenge. In Part B, they fill in the bubble beside the best answer for two questions about how a cactus survives in the desert and what happens to owls when forest trees are cut down. In Part C, students choose one environment and write two sentences telling one way people can help protect it. Use it as an independent science center, a homework page, or a quick check before a habitats unit test.

What’s Included

• 1 print-ready PDF worksheet
• Answer key
• 5 clue-and-word-bank items, 2 fill-in-the-bubble questions, and 1 written response

Three reasons this Our Environment Worksheet helps kids learn: first, the clue format builds precise science vocabulary, so students connect words like wetland and grassland to real features of a place instead of memorizing a list. Second, the fill-in-the-bubble questions ask students to reason from a cause to its effect, which is exactly the kind of thinking a science assessment measures. Third, the written response gives every child a chance to explain an idea in their own words, which turns a definition into real understanding.

Teachers and parents can extend the lesson easily. Take a short walk outside and list the living and nonliving parts of your own environment. Sort animal picture cards into habitat piles, then ask students to defend each choice out loud. Start a class chart that records one small way to protect the environment each week, such as recycling paper or turning off the lights. You can also have students draw the environment they wrote about in Part C and label three things an animal there needs in order to survive.

Related Resources

• Matching Habitats Worksheet
• Habitats Research Worksheet
• Ocean Animal Habitat Worksheet
• Animal Song by Have Fun Teaching