Food Chains

Activity One - Owl Pellets

2. Have the students separate the bones from the fur and feathers.

3. Make groups of skulls and similar bones. 
Try to determine using resource guides what type of animals the bones came from. 

4. Lay out the bones to form as many skeletons as possible. 
Glue skeletons on poster board and label.

5. Make a drawing of a food chain including the owl, its prey, and what its prey eats.

6. Discuss the similarities of each pair’s findings.

Activity Two - Popcorn Food Chain (K-3)

4. The 12 students designated as plants take a handful of popcorn from the sun
and each eats some but not all of their popcorn. 

5. The 6 students designated as plant eaters take popcorn from 2 plants each and eat some but not all of it.

6. Each of the 2 students designated as meat eaters takes the unconsumed popcorn from 3 plant eaters.

7. Discuss where the energy came from and how it is passed on.

8. Discuss what would happen to the cycle if some of the plants or plant eaters were killed. 

Activity Three - Deadly Links (3-6)

2. Give each “grasshopper” a paper bag (representing their stomach).

3. Tell students to close their eyes.

4. Docent will distribute colored and white paper dots around open space while students have their eyes closed. 

5. Students are then instructed to open their eyes and on your count collect as much food as they can. 
After 30 seconds have elapsed, tell them to stop.

6. The “shrews” are then to hunt for grasshoppers.  They must tag a grasshopper in order to catch it. 
When the “shrew” catches a “grasshopper”, they take its food.  After 45 seconds, they are told to stop. 

7. For the next 60 seconds, hawks hunt shrews, alive shrews hunt grasshoppers, and alive grasshoppers hunt food chips. 

8. Everyone gathers in a circle and talks about which animal ate what food.

9. Then tell students to look in their bags for multi-colored paper, representative of pesticide.
Grasshoppers that were not consumed, but have any multi-colored paper in their bags are now dead also.
Shrews that have more than half of their bag full of multi-colored paper are dead and the hawk with
the most multi-colored paper will not reproduce successfully.

10. Talk about how pesticides affect the food chain.

Activity Four - What's For Dinner?

2. Have students think about where their food comes from.

3. Let students illustrate the food chains of their favorite foods.

4. Talk with students about what plants, animals, and people need to survive.

Activity Five - Where's the Fox?

2. Students form a circle.  The docent tells them that this circle is now their forest.

3. Docent starts with the fox and informs students that we have a red fox living at the Arboretum.

4. Docent then asks the students to look at the other animals that live in the forest represented in the circle.

5. Next the docent asks the students who would eat the fox, as well as who would the fox eat.

6. The prey that is selected is given a string.  The fox holds one end and the animal just eaten holds the other.

7. The docent tells the students that the string represents the relationship between the fox and the animal. 
One needs the other to live.

8. The animal that has been eaten is asked the same questions as the fox-who would you eat and who would eat you.

9. This continues until all the strings or relationships have been connected.

10. Then the docent asks what would happen if all the insects were eradicated due to a chemical spill. 
Who would suffer if this relationship did not exist? 
This cycle continues down the chain until the fox is left hungry and dying.

 

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