Who Eats Who?

Subject: Science Lesson Duration: 60 Minutes Additional Standards: NGSS K-KS1-1. Use observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals (including humans) need to survive.

Essential Question

Objective

Students are able to classify animals by their basic food sources (herbivore, omnivore and carnivore).

Background

This is an activity on the real predator-prey relationships in W-GIPP, and a lesson on the food chain. In the real world, plants support animals. In turn, plants are supported by sunlight, soil and water. Plant eaters are called herbivores, meat eaters are called carnivores and those who eat both are called omnivores. It is very helpful to have a skull of each kind of “vore”, or at least a picture of their teeth. A good source for skulls is the Predator Prey Traveling Trunk.

Preparation

• Pictures of animals from various sources
• Pictures of foods the animals may eat
• Chart of Glacier animals and what they eat
• Animal reading materials (Mountain Wildlife by Marj Dunmire, D & L Distribution, Cahone, CO -- excellent source)
• Per student small group:
  • green construction paper cut into 5 x 20cm strips (15)
  • white strips (10)
  • red strips (6)
  • brown strips (3)

  Procedure

  1. Display pictures of a variety of local animals (cut-outs from same sources as previous activities).
  2. Have students use reading materials to gather information about the things animals eat. You can also distribute copies of the chart of Glacier animals and what each eats.
  3. Discuss what the different animals might eat. It may be helpful to cluster food pictures around the animals on a display board (tape, tacky putty, etc.). Group them in the herbivore, carnivore, omnivore categories.
  4. Per group, give the students their allotment of paper strips and have them label each strip with an appropriate plant or animal – green strips should have the name of a plant (or just “plant”), white should be herbivores, red, carnivores and brown, omnivores.
  5. Have the students roll the green strips into loops with tape, connecting all the plants together in a chain by looping them through the last loop they made.
  6. Next, they should loop the herbivores through the plant loops (on one side and centered). Repeat, centering the carnivore loops above the herbivores. Finally, loop the omnivore strips along the edges of the chain/triangle, attaching them to both the plants and animals.
  7. Sing the song “There Once Was a Daisy”, found here, to the tune of “I Knew an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly”

  Assessment Materials

  Have students either illustrate the song or make their own simple food chain with extra loops (e. g. plant – insect – fish – eagle).