Food Chain

Make a mobile using index cards and string. I had my middle schoolers do it years ago and they loved it. On each card the name of the species was on one side and other info was on the back. They can add pictures also. Hang them up around the room!

I had my students make links like a chain. They used green for producers and red for decomposers. Other colors were used for consumers. After they made a basic chain with 5 links (1 producer, 1 decomploser and 3 consumers) they had to branch their chains out towards a "web" and add other consumers to their consumer links representing other animals/organisms that would consume them.

I don't know if it qualifies as "cute," but I had my students draw the food chain for their own meals. They had to figure out the ingredients in everything and then draw the flow of energy up to themselves.

They had a lot of fun with it and were really interested in how their food was also part of a chain.

I saw an art project somewhere that has students draw one animal within another. For example: students draw a big fox, with-in the fox they draw a rabbit, with in the rabbit they draw a carrot. It looked really cute. There is also a very cute "Magic School Bus Gets Eaten" video about the food chain! We just watched it today! :D

what i do is that everyone is in a circle wearing a name tag of an organsim in a certain envionment and they throw the ball of string to the organism they eat. at the end you cut one line of the string and it shows how the food web breaks when one animal is affected.

this is all i have let me know if you come up with something new

If your school does "Thinking Maps", you can do a tree map to classify the different levels of a food chain - give examples of each. Then you can have several pictures of animals, and divide the class into groups. Give each group 4 animals and let them figure out what order of the food chain they are. Then give them 4 strips of paper - make into a paper chain. Write each animal's name (and/or glue picture on) on each piece of the chain. After each group presents theirs to the class, let them tape them to the board. Then discuss what a web is - and how it compares (that's a benchmark for us in our state in 4th grade). You can do it easiest by running a piece of yarn through one loop of a chain, and show how that animal can "overlap" into another food chain - thus creating a web.

I used the 4 oz dixie cups for Phytoplankton, 8 oz for Zooplankton, 12 oz for a small fish, and 16 oz for tuna fish. I explained also that since the child was holding it they were they fifth link in the chain. You can obviously use this idea for any food chain you want and you can make it as long as you want if you can continue to find larger cups.

Hi! I have used this idea in 3rd and 4th, and it would work in 2nd as well.

My kids pick a producer, consumer, and decomposer. They draw a picture of each on a very small paper plate. They arrange the three in the correct order of the food chain. Then I just stapled the three plates together (like a stoplight) and hung them up around the room.

This was a great lesson to be creative and imaginative, but also make them THINK! They wanted to put a rabbit with a shark and a mushroom, without taking into consideration that those don't live in the same ecosystem! They had to be accurate in their food chain. Hope this helps!

I played a game to see how energy transferred through the food chain by playing tag. There are three or more kinds of animals, cougars, plants, and deer. It is like taga and paper rock scissors. If a deer touches a plant, the plant becomes deer, cougars catch deer, and plants catch cougars (everything becomes part of the earth when it dies). Stop occasionally and tally what you are and you can graph it later. Kids like playing it, and it can lead to food chain, energy chain, etc...

I do food chains and food webs with my children (when we study our salt marsh). The children wear a card with a picture and a name of an animal/fish/.. on it. Each card has the number of strings attached to the bottom of it as children who are animals that they eat. (An animal high on the food chain might have three strings attached and the animal at the bottom of the food chain would not have any strings attached). They can use the strings to connect together making a straight food chain, and more complex food webs.

I have posters with an example of a food chain and a food web to show them during the introduction.

Jaime

This is probably a little corny but I always give my students strips of paper and have them write the name of an animal and draw the animal. Then they make a chain with the paper in the order that the animals may be eaten. For example: draw grass, bug, snake, hawk then hook them together.

We also play a predator/prey game. I get lots of little plastic bugs and divide the class in half. One half are the predators and the other half are the prey. I put all the bugs and the predators at one end of the gym and the prey and the other end. The "prey" have to try to run to the other end of the gym, get a bug and run back. If they are caught by a "predator" they are out. I also put about 5 hula hoops around the gym as safety zones. They can stand in a hoop to act as if they have reached a safe hiding place.

Hope some of this helps!
Tracy

I have my students do this yearly when we discuss food webs and food chains. I doubt if it really matters where you get the pellets from. I have purchased my own when I was the only science teacher and now have used pellets at my school that were ordered by someone else. All are fine. Just check out the size, you dont want too small of one.

I don't have my kids reconstruct the skeletons and I teach 7th grade. It is just too hard, too many bones are missing or too small. I give my students a bone identification chart and have them identify the bone. It has 3 possible animals and actual pictures of the different bones (ex. skull, scapula, etc) then they glue the bone onto cardstock and label it. Their mini poster must have a title and include a minimum of 10 bones that are identified by the animal and name of the bone.
Then I give them a handout that shows all the possible animals, including an owl, in the owl's food web and they have to color, cut out and reconstruct the web for me correctly. It takes 3 days to do.
1 day for the actual dissecting.
day 2 for making the mini poster
day 3 for the food web
I hang the bone posters and food webs in the hall. I usually do this right before open house so the parents' can see their work.

Hope this helps
Trish

I love your idea for the zoo. I might give it a try and put my idea on hold.

My ecosystem unit is slightly different because we focus on food chains/webs. I though I would share it with you and maybe you can incorporate it into what you are doing.

First, I collect all kinds of habitat books from the library. For about a week before I begin the unit, students read as many as they can so they are familiar with a variety of habitats.

Then, students work in pairs, choose a habitat, gather the books about that habitat, and make a list of plants and animals that live in that habitat. At the same time, I am teaching about food chains and food webs.

When the student's lists are completed, individuals design their own food chain. I take a piece of 12" x 18" paper and cut it into two 6" x 18 inch parts. These two parts are laid and taped end to end to form a long 6" x 36" sheet. On this, the students draw, outline in a thin black marker, and color the plants and animals in their food chain. At the very end, they leave enough room for their food chain poem. Here is an example:

The Meadow
These are the young owlets
that were fed by the mother owl,
that caught the slithering snake,
that swallowed the bumpy toad,
that gobbled the milkweed beetle,
that fed on the milkweed pod,
that grows in the meadow where Jessica lives.

The title is the habitat and the body of the poem is the plants and animals shown in the food chain poster. This is also a good way to use the thesaurus to find verbs that are specific and make a clear picture. The last line repeats the habitat and the child's name.

Hope I have helped!!