Life Cycle - Natural Environment (KB)
Lab

   
OBJECTIVES:
  • Dramatizing who eats whom.
  • Exploring the food chain.
VOCABULARY:
  • consumer
  • food chain
  • producer
MATERIALS:

Students dramatize a food chain with puppets.  

BACKGROUND:

There are many different food chains in a given area.    If an organism relies solely on one organism for food, the first organism will be in trouble if the second dies out.   The food chain refers to  "Who eats whom" relationship.  

For instance, humans eat hamburger which comes from the meat of a cow, which eats only grass (herbivore).  But humans don't only eat meat, they eat many other items that come from both animals and plants (omnivore).  A lion may eat an antelope, which in turn eats grass.  But a lion also eats many other smaller mammals, fish, and birds, so the food chain gets complicated. 

If you plotted the entire food habits of an organism this would be called a food web.

PROCEDURE:
  1. Read  Working on the Food Chain to students.  It is a short poem about who eats whom.   This book is not only a good introduction to the lab, but can be used again as a conclusion.  
      
  2. In this exercise, introduce students to different types of animals by using puppets.  We recommend Folkmanis puppets because they are realistic.  Discuss each of the puppets that you will be using, showing the students how to work the puppet.  Tell a small story about where the animal lives (you may want to have maps, to show students where they live).  You can have the students in groups look and play with the puppets, telling them that they are going to have to develop a story about the puppets and if they would be eaten in the real world.  
      
  3. Get the students in a group and have certain students become the "animal" by portraying the animal using the appropriate  puppet.  For instance, if you have a ladybug puppet, have a student play the ladybug.  That student will dramatize how the ladybug lives, then from the other puppets the class finds the animal next on the food chain.  The frog can eat a ladybug, so you have the student who is the frog come up to the front of the class and "eat" the ladybug.  Then continue the story.  You will find that not all of the puppets fit in a food chain.  For instance, if you have a Koala Bear, they don't eat other mammals, they just eat leaves, so it has a different food chain.
      
  4. Have students use their imaginations.  You may have to control the "eating" sessions, young children can be very dramatic.

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