K-4 ACTIVITIES | 5-8
ACTIVITIES | 9-12 ACTIVITIES | THE GEOGRAPHERS LIBRARY | SKETCHBOOK | GEOGRAPHY
EDUCATION PROGRAM | TV
| RESOURCES
K-4 Activities: THE FOOD CHAIN
The animals of the Okavangocrocodiles and cheetahs, lechwes and pangolins,
hippos and wild dogscompete to survive. All need water. All need to eat.
What do they eat? Herbivores
eat plants. Some carnivores eat the animals that eat the plants, and some eat
other carnivores. Omnivores eat both plants and animals. The network of
dependence between animals and plants of the Okavango, or any ecosystem,
is called the food chain.
Spinning a Food Web
Divide your students into groups of 6 to 12 and ask the groups to form
circles. Each student in a circle will play the part of an animal found in
the Okavango Delta or the grass and trees which some of the animals eat.
Animals could include the lechwe, pangolin, termite, wild dog, cheetah,
hippopotamus, or crocodile. Begin with a ball of yarn and a student
pretending to be the grass. Have the student hold one end and toss the ball
to an animal that would eat the grass, stating grass and the animal
eating it. For example, Grass is eaten by lechwe. Then that student might
say Lechwe is eaten by crocodile. and toss the ball to a student playing a crocodile,
while still holding on to part of the yarn. This continues until the end of
the food chain. The top carnivore reverses the order, tossing the yarn to an animal that it would hunt.
Soon all of the students end up holding part of the yarn, illustrating both
individual food chains and the interconnection of chains into a food web.
Begin again, this time with a selection of plants and animals found near your
school. This can lead to a class discussion of how fragile
the chains are and how disturbing one species in an ecosystem can
affect many other plants or animals, directly and indirectly.
Never Break the Chain
Create a card game with your students. Make cards with the names and pictures of animals found in the Okavango
Delta, as well as grass, trees, and decaying logs. You can print the
pictures
to color here online or have students sketch their own. Students can
create a food chain one card at a time. Give each student an equal number of cards and place one face up where all can see it. Taking turns, students can place one of their cards on the pile or they can pass. If they place a card on another that would not be adjacent in a food chain (such as one plant on another, or a carnivore on a plant), however, then they must pick up all the cards in the pile. Some valid
chains
include grass to lechwe to crocodile and decaying log to termite to
pangolin
to wild dog. The first student to place his or her last card wins.
Help your class create a game for the playground or gym in which each
student
plays an animal that can be tagged only by animals that would hunt it.
After
the students pick their animals, divide them into groups to make rules
about
whom their animal can hunt and who can hunt their animal. Then have the
groups
explain their rules to the class. For example, students playing
pangolins
might curl up to avoid being tagged. One cheetah or one crocodile
could tag a lechwe, but it might take two wild dogs. Crocodiles could tag
a wild
dog but not a hippopotamus. After your students try out their game, have
them teach it to a class of younger students.
©1996 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.
K-4 ACTIVITIES | 5-8
ACTIVITIES | 9-12 ACTIVITIES | THE GEOGRAPHERS LIBRARY | SKETCHBOOK | GEOGRAPHY
EDUCATION PROGRAM | TV
| RESOURCES
|