School › Food chains › Ages 6–7
Who eats whom?
Plants make food, animals eat plants or other animals, and tiny living things clean up. Make a paper food chain and find out who eats whom.
Read
All living things need food. A food chain shows who eats whom.[1]
Plants are producers: they make their own food using sunlight. Every food chain starts with a plant (or tiny plant-like living things in the sea).[1]
Animals are consumers: they eat plants or other animals. A rabbit eats grass and a fox eats the rabbit: grass → rabbit → fox. The arrows show where the food goes.[1][2]
Animals that eat plants are called herbivores. Animals that eat meat are carnivores. Animals that eat both, like people, are omnivores.[1]
At the top of a food chain is an animal that nothing else hunts, like a hawk.[1]
Decomposers, like fungi and bacteria, break down dead plants and animals. This gives food back to the soil for new plants.[1]
Try it: Make a paper food chain
You need
- Strips of coloured paper (about 3 cm × 20 cm)
- Crayons or felt-tip pens
- Glue stick or sticky tape
- Pictures of grass, a grasshopper, a rat, a snake and a hawk (or draw them)
Safety
Use round-ended scissors if you cut the strips. Wash hands after using glue.
What to do
- Draw a plant (grass) on a green strip.
- Draw an animal that eats grass (a grasshopper) on another strip.
- Draw an animal that eats the grasshopper (a rat), then a snake that eats the rat, then a hawk that eats the snake.
- Make the grass strip into a loop and glue it. Push the next strip through it, make a loop and glue. Keep going in order to make a paper chain.
- Hold your chain up. Which one is the producer? Which one is at the top?
- Add a brown loop for the decomposers (mushrooms and tiny bacteria) and join it back to the grass. Now the chain goes round!
What happens, and why?
Grass makes its own food with sunlight, so it is the producer at the start. Each animal eats the one before it: grass → grasshopper → rat → snake → hawk. Nothing hunts the hawk, so it is at the top. Decomposers break down dead things and give food back to the soil for new grass.[1]
Play: Producer, consumer or decomposer?
Does it make its own food, eat other living things, or break down dead things? Tap the right group.
Your best score is kept only on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Quiz
Other ages: Ages 10–11 · Ages 15–16