Option 1: Reinforce the activity by sending home copies of the family-friendly Web of Life Activity student page, which invites students to create individual models of a forest food web with their families.
Option 2: Invite students to use Webspiration or another online application to create a food web or food chain for the forest ecosystem, using information they gleaned from the activity. Their models should show the transfer of energy from one organism to another.
Option 3: With construction paper and colored markers, make cutouts of the food web organisms from the activity. Using a clothes hanger and thread to hang cutouts in the proper arrangement, students can construct a mobile that represents their food web. Challenge them to use arrows or other means to show the transfer of energy between the organisms.
Option 4: Challenge students to draw a food chain for their favorite food or meal. For information, you may first read aloud Who Eats What? Food Chains and Food Webs by Patricia Lauber, described in the Additional Resources.
Option 5: Have students compose their own poems about food webs, using as inspiration What’s for Dinner? Quirky, Squirmy Poems from the Animal World by Katherine B. Hauth and David Clark (described in Additional Resources) or another poetry book. Create a “Poet-Tree” using a dead tree limb—held in a can with rocks or plaster of Paris—onto which you clip each student’s poem.
Option 6: Read Pond Circle by Betsy Franco and Stefano Vitale, described in Additional Resources. Invite students to make a model of the pond food chain using paper chain links they glue together. On each link, have the students write one component of the food chain.
See Additional Resources for more ideas to enrich this activity.
