Lesson Plan Details

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Location
Web of Life, The (Adapted from Project Learning Tree (FBCEC)

Topic

Laboratory and Hands-on Activities - Food Chain / Web of Life

Laboratory and Hands-on Activities - Physical Activity

Summary

Participants will learn that all living things are interdependent. They will
discover how a source of food, water or shelter for one animal supports
the rest of the animals in a habitat.

Recommended
Setting

Any large area

Location

Fred Berry Conservation Education Center, Yellville, AR

Contact

Education Program Coordinator, 870-449-3484

Duration

30 - 45 minutes

Suggested
Number of
Participants

Up to 24

Objectives

Key Terms*

Understand that interrelated food chains compose a food web.

Demonstrate flows of energy from one organism to another.

Identify organisms as decomposers, producers or consumers.

Create a written and/or visual scenario predicting sequences of

change within a food web when species are lost.

Community
Consumer
Decomposer
Food chain
Habitat
Limiting factors
Producer
Link to glossary for definitions

Materials

Copy of A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (optional)

Pictures of local animals/plants-with holes and strings
Web of Life, page 194 in Project Learning Tree curriculum guide
(optional)

Yarn
Background

An animals habitat provides its basic needs: food, water, shelter and
space. At the foundation are the producers, which are primarily plants that
produce food for themselves. Animals that eat producers are called firstlevel consumers. Second-level consumers feed on first-level consumers,
etc. All the organisms within a community, and the resources that support
them, are directly or indirectly related.

Procedure
1. Arrange the participants in a circle with the instructor in the
middle.
2. Ask the participants to identify some animals and plants that live
in Arkansas. Give each of them a plant or animal card and have
them put it on like a necklace.
3. Ask what every living thing must have to survive. When someone
says sunlight, begin the game there. Give that participant a
sunlight card and the ball of yarn.
4. Next ask the participant to name something that uses the sun for
food. Have the sunlight participant hold onto the end of the yarn
and toss the ball of yarn to a participant with a plant card. Explain
that a plant is a producer. It makes its own food and is eaten by an
animal, a consumer.
5. Ask what would eat that plant and have the plant hold onto the
yarn and toss the ball to an animal that would eat it. (The group
may want to broaden the possibilities by tossing to anything the
plant would be used for, such as shelter.)
6. Continue until all participants are holding the yarn and a web has
been constructed in the center of the circle. If the game gets to a
point where there is nothing that would eat the animal (top of the
food chain), ask, What would that animal eat? and continue
from there. A decomposer could be introduced at this point since
they would eat a dead animal at the top of a food chain.
7. When the yarn is used up, introduce a limiting factor that would
affect the web. For example, imagine that road construction
eliminated some habitat. Select a couple of species that might be
affected and have them tug on the string. Ask the others if they
could feel the tug. Explain that in the food web, all the living

things are somehow, either directly or indirectly, affected when

populations change. The effect can be slight or great.
8. To demonstrate, tell participants that one of the species was
affected so adversely that it is now out of the food chain. Have the
participant representing that species drop the string. Note any
changes in the web.
9. Next, ask the participants that were directly connected by the
string to that participant how this affects them. Participants
representing animals that eat the missing species will also need to
drop the string. Next are the ones that eat those animals. Continue
in this manner. Eventually each participant should be affected. Ask
if they could feel a difference in the web each time a species was
lost?
Modifications

For older children: Continue discussion by asking them to imagine

a habitat with wolves. What would happen to other living things if
the wolves died? Then read Thinking Like a Mountain from
Aldo Leopolds Sand County Almanac.

Another option is to have participants select an organism and write

a scenario where changes might occur within that organisms
environment. If there is time and the participants are old enough,
these scenarios could be illustrated and/or shared with the group.

Describe a food web for a woodland habitat.

Compare producers, consumers and decomposers of the food

chain.

Explain the effect of an extended drought in a food web.

Review

Resources

Sweeney, Linda Booth (2001). When a Butterfly Sneezes A Guide for

Helping Kids Explore Interconnections in Our World Through Favorite
Stories. Pegasus Communications, Inc., Waltham, MA.

Glossary

Community all the different populations of an area

Consumer in ecology, an organism, usually an animal, that feeds on
other organisms and their remains; classified as primary consumers

(herbivores), secondary consumers (carnivores) and microconsumers

(decomposers)
Decomposer an organism that breaks down large chemicals from dead
organisms into small chemicals and returns important materials to the soil
and water
Food chain feeding order in an ecological community that passes food
energy from one organism to another as each consumes a lower member
and in turn is preyed upon by a higher member
Habitat an arrangement of food, water, shelter or cover, and space
suitable to animals needs
Limiting factors element that affects the amount of wildlife a habitat
can sustain, including food, water, space, predators, disease and pollution
Producer an organism that creates its own food from inorganic
substances through photosynthesis (by green plants) or chemosynthesis
(by anaerobic bacteria) and serves as a source of food in the food chain