Classroom Activities: Food Chain

These classroom activities are designed to complement the Food Chain topic on BrainPOP Jr.

Food Chain Chain

Have students research and outline a food chain. Remind your students that most food chains begin with the Sun, which provides energy for everything that grows on the planet. Then have students draw each part of their food chain on individual rectangular strips of construction paper. Make sure they label each picture. Then have them make a paper chain link with their drawings. Students can share their food chains with the whole class and discuss each part. Is the living thing a producer or a consumer? Is it a carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore? Then have students predict what might happen if one of their links in their chain became endangered or extinct. Have them break a link of their chain to demonstrate and draw conclusions.

Food Web Mural

Have the class pick a habitat together, such as a desert, ocean, or pond. Then have students brainstorm different animals that belong in the habitat. Encourage them to name both producers and consumers, and assist them in identifying which consumers are herbivores and which are carnivores. You may need to visit the library together or research on the Internet. Then draw a large food web mural on butcher paper. You may want to assign small groups to draw a specific set of organisms of the habitat, for example, the consumers of the ocean floor, or you may want to assign small groups to research and draw specific kinds of animals, such as mammals, reptiles, fish, or amphibians. Continuously ask questions during the creative process. What might happen if the habitat was destroyed? What could happen in the ocean if predatory fish, like shark or tuna, became extinct? What might happen on land if organisms lower on the food chain, like worms or caterpillars, become extinct?