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Grow It 3-5 / Week 10 / Grow It Day
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Week 10 · The Garden Food Web

Grow It Day

Grow It Day: Food Web Poster
// Who eats what, and where it all goes
⏱ about 15 min

Grow It Day: Food Web Poster

Rocket unrolls a long sheet of paper on the kitchen table. "Let's draw every living thing in a garden!"

Raven grabs the crayons. "What do you notice we always start with?"

Nova hovers over the corner of the paper. "Leave room at the top for the Sun," she says. "Then think about the arrows."

The whole family gathers around to help.

  1. Plants are producers. They use light energy to make food from air and water.
  2. Consumers eat plants or animals. Herbivores, carnivores and omnivores are consumers.
  3. Decomposers like worms, fungi and bacteria return nutrients to the soil.
  4. Many food chains link into a food web, and matter moves around it.
  5. Living things do well in some habitats and less well in others.
◇ MAKE A GARDEN FOOD WEB POSTER
Draw the Sun at the top of a big sheet of paper.
Draw three producers, like grass, an oak tree and a bean plant.
Draw consumers, like a bee, a caterpillar, a butterfly and a chickadee.
Draw decomposers near the bottom, like worms and fungi in the soil.
Draw arrows from each food to its eater.
Draw arrows from dead leaves to the decomposers, then to the soil.
Take turns explaining one arrow to your family.
Safety first
Use crayons or markers only. No scissors are needed.
If you go outside for ideas, stay with a grown-up and never touch a bee.
For a grown-up
Ask your child where the matter goes after a leaf falls.
Praise good thinking, even when an arrow points the wrong way. Fix it together.
POSTER CHECK
  • Read the question.
  • Tap your answer.
What goes at the start of every garden food chain?
A worm eats a dead leaf. Which way does the arrow point?
Which group puts nutrients back into the soil?

What a web! Next week we watch the weather and learn when gardeners plant their seeds.

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