Two food chains, each read from the bottom up. In a meadow: the Sun, grass, a grasshopper, a frog, a snake and a hawk, with the mushrooms that break down whatever dies. In a kelp forest: the Sun, kelp, sea urchins and sea otters, with bacteria. Print either one labelled; to label, with a word bank and three questions; or to cut and glue in order. The labelled sheet follows as the answer key.
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The Sheet menu prints the meadow’s chain or the kelp forest’s. Labelled puts each one’s place in the chain in its box, with a sentence on what it eats or does beside it, or on the page after the picture on A5 and Half Letter. To label leaves a numbered, empty box for each place and puts the words in a word bank, and on Letter and A4 asks three questions that the answer key answers. To cut and glue prints the pictures to cut out, in alphabetical order so the order gives nothing away, and names each place in the chain, so a child glues the producer at the bottom and works up to the top predator. In Colour the grass and the grasshopper print green, the hawk and the sea otter brown; Ink saver prints the pictures as outlines, to colour in. Make your own prints the Sun and an empty square for each place, from the producer to the top predator, and one for the decomposer, each with a line for its name and lines for what it eats: for a chain from a pond, a backyard or a habitat the class is studying.
From the food to the eater. An arrow from the grass to the grasshopper means the grasshopper eats the grass, and it shows the way the energy goes: NOAA puts it as energy flowing from prey to predator. Children often draw the arrow the other way, from the eater to its food, so the sheet says it at the top.
Producers, such as plants and algae, make their own food: plants use sunlight to make it, which is called photosynthesis. Primary consumers eat producers; an animal that eats only plants is an herbivore. Secondary consumers eat the primary consumers, and tertiary consumers eat the secondary consumers. A top predator sits at the top of the chain, with no predators of its own. Whatever dies at any step is broken down by fungi and bacteria, the decomposers, and recycled into nutrients for the producers. These levels follow NOAA’s “Aquatic food webs” and its lesson “Food Chains and Webs”.
A food chain follows one line of who eats whom. A food web joins all the food chains in a place, because most animals eat more than one thing and are eaten by more than one: the frog on this sheet also eats spiders, and the garter snake eats earthworms as well as frogs. NOAA’s “Aquatic food webs” draws a whole web, from phytoplankton to tuna and seals.
Kelp is a large brown alga that grows in forests under the water along much of the west coast of North America. Like plants, it uses sunlight to make its own food, so it is the producer. Sea urchins eat the kelp, and sea otters eat the sea urchins, which makes the sea otter the top predator in this chain. When sea otters were overhunted for their fur in the 1800s, the sea urchins grew in number and ate all of the kelp. The reading passage “Sea Otters and the Kelp Forest” tells the story, from NOAA’s “Aquatic food webs” and “What is a kelp forest?”.
A flowering plant to label and colour: the flower, a leaf, the stem and the roots, and a fruit cut open to show its seeds. Print it labelled, with what each part does, or with empty boxes and a word bank, and the labelled sheet after it as the answer key.
An adult insect seen from above, with its eight parts to learn: the head, an antenna, a compound eye, the thorax and the abdomen, a leg, a wing and the spiracles it breathes through. Print it labelled, with what each part is, or with empty boxes, a word bank and three questions, and the labelled sheet after it as the answer key.
A flower cut in half to show its ten parts: the petal, the sepal, the anther and the filament of a stamen, the stigma, the style and the ovary of the pistil, the ovules inside it, the receptacle and the stem. Print it labelled, with what each part is, or with empty boxes, a word bank and four questions, and the labelled sheet after it as the answer key.
An animal cell and a plant cell, each cut open to show ten parts. Both have a cell membrane, cytoplasm, a nucleus, mitochondria, ribosomes, the endoplasmic reticulum, the Golgi apparatus and a vacuole; the animal cell also shows the nucleolus and a lysosome, the plant cell its cell wall and chloroplasts. Print either one labelled, with what each part is; to label, with empty boxes, a word bank and three questions; or with the names to cut out and glue in. The labelled sheet follows as the answer key.
NOAA’s food web for the Gulf of Maine: plankton, krill, scallops, herring, mackerel, dogfish, cod, tuna and seals, each arrow from a food to the animal that eats it. Print it labelled, with five questions, or with the arrows left out to draw from the clues. The labelled sheet is the answer key. Or draw your own web, from a place you know.
What a plant needs to grow, three ways: twelve pictures to circle the things a plant needs, with the key; the seven needs round a seedling in its pot, labelled or to label; and a two-week test of whether a plant needs light.
The four stages of a monarch butterfly drawn in a cycle, egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly, with an arrow from each to the next and what happens at each stage. Print it labelled, to label with a word bank, or with the four pictures to cut out and glue in order; the answer key follows.
The four stages of a northern leopard frog drawn in a cycle, egg, tadpole, froglet and frog, with an arrow from each to the next and what happens at each stage. Print it labelled, to label with a word bank, or with the four pictures to cut out and glue in order; the answer key follows.
The life cycle of a flowering plant, a bean, drawn in four stages, seed, sprout, seedling and adult plant with its flowers and pods, with an arrow from each to the next and back to the seed. Print it labelled, with what happens at each stage, to label with a word bank, or to cut and glue in order; the answer key follows.
The four stages of a chicken drawn in a cycle, egg, embryo, chick and hen, with an arrow from each to the next and what happens at each stage, the days counted from the egg. Print it labelled, to label with a word bank, or with the four pictures to cut out and glue in order; the answer key follows.
The four stages of a ladybug drawn in a cycle, eggs, larva, pupa and adult, with an arrow from each to the next and what happens at each stage. Print it labelled, to label with a word bank, or with the four pictures to cut out and glue in order; the answer key follows.
The four stages of a pumpkin drawn in a cycle, seed, sprout, flower and pumpkin, with an arrow from each to the next and back to the seed. Print it labelled, with what happens at each stage, to label with a word bank, or with the four pictures to cut out and glue in order; the answer key follows.
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