Food Chains
A single path that shows how energy moves from one living thing to another as each one is eaten by the next.
Answer: What is a food chain?
Many connected food chains in an ecosystem.
Answer: What is a food web?
The process by which plants use sunlight, air, and water to make their own food so they can grow.
Answer: What is photosynthesis?
Eating a variety of foods from the different food groups, in the right amounts, so your body gets the nutrients and energy it needs.
Answer: What is a balanced diet?
A nutrient your body needs in small amounts to grow and stay healthy. Calcium and iron are examples; calcium helps build strong bones and teeth.
Answer: What is a mineral?
A living thing, usually a green plant, that makes its own food using sunlight. It starts almost every food chain.
Answer: What is a producer?
An animal that hunts and eats other animals.
Answer: What is a predator?
The movement of energy from the Sun to plants, then to the animals that eat those plants, and on to the animals that eat them.
Answer: What is energy flow?
A category of foods that are alike in the nutrients they give your body. Fruits, vegetables, grains, protein foods, and dairy are examples.
Answer: What is a food group?
All the living and non-living things in an area, and how they interact with each other.
Answer: What is an ecosystem?
An animal that eats mostly plants. A grasshopper eating corn is one.
Answer: What is a herbivore?
An animal that is hunted and eaten by a predator.
Answer: What is prey?
A living thing that cannot make its own food, so it gets energy by eating plants or other animals.
Answer: What is a consumer?
A substance in food that your body needs to grow, repair itself, stay healthy, and have energy.
Answer: What is a nutrient?
Put this in order as a food chain model, starting with the producer: Hawk, Corn, Grasshopper, Frog.
Answer: Corn -> Grasshopper -> Frog -> Hawk
An animal that eats mostly other animals. A frog eating a grasshopper is one.
Answer: What is a carnivore?
An animal at the very top of a food chain. It hunts other animals, but no other animal in its ecosystem normally hunts it.
Answer: What is an apex predator?
Plants get most of the materials they need to grow chiefly from these two things - not mainly from the soil.
Answer: What are air and water?
A nutrient that helps your body grow and repair muscles and other body parts. It is found in meat, eggs, beans, and nuts.
Answer: What is protein?
Follow the energy backwards: you eat chicken, the chicken ate corn, and the corn captured its energy from this.
Answer: What is the Sun?
An animal that eats both plants and other animals. A chicken that eats corn and bugs is one.
Answer: What is an omnivore?
A living thing, such as a mushroom, that breaks down dead plants and animals and returns nutrients to the soil.
Answer: What is a decomposer?
The energy in the food an animal eats - used for body repair, growth, motion, and body warmth - was once energy from this source.
Answer: What is the Sun?
A nutrient your body needs in small amounts to stay healthy and help fight illness. Many fruits and vegetables are full of these.
Answer: What is a vitamin?
What happens to a whole food web - and to the foods on our healthy plates - if all the producers disappear?
Answer: It collapses - no producers capture Sun energy, so consumers (including people) lose their food energy.