Learn about human systems.

Traveling Humans
Wherever humans have lived or traveled, they have changed their environments and natural surroundings. People have blasted through mountains to build roads, cut down forests, built houses, and used grasslands to graze herds. Some human actions have damaged the natural environment, and some have not.

Influencing Peoples Lives
The environment also influences the way people live. People adapt their lives to some environmental conditions. To live in a cold climate, for example, people must invent ways to protect themselves and make a living in the cold. To live in a place that is dry, people have to develop ways to provide water.

Adapting
People adapt to their surroudings more often then you would think. For example, if you are in your house doing something and the air-conditioning clicks on, you might put on a pair of socks. Or if you went swimming, you would put on a bathing suit to adapt to the current surroundings of water.

Social Studies/People, Places and Environments

Standard 2: The student understands the interactions of people and the physical environment (SS.B.2.3).

Objective 7: Knows how various human systems throughout the world have developed in response to conditions in the physical environment.

Amusement Park Activity

Adapting To Amusement Parks- Go to an amusement park and make a list of rides you have to adapt to in order to enjoy. Why do you have to adapt to them?

Brainstorming Fun

Idea 1. What are ways that we
adapt to things?

Idea 2. What are other ways that
the environment influences our
lives.

Vocabulary

Climate - the prevailing set
of conditions

Adapting - implies a modification
according to changing
circumstances.

Coney Island was considered
the world's largest and premier
amusement area during the first
half of the 20th Century.