Food Chain Activity

    While teaching food chains and food webs, I spent some time looking for a fun way for my students to demonstrate their knowledge.  Since students had read about different food chains, acted out different food chains, and played a food chain tag game, I was looking for an engaging art based food chain project.  I was unsuccessful in finding something I liked, or something that looked manageable, so I decided to "wing it!"  As you know, sometimes the best projects come from the "wing it" mentality.  

Students each received a food chain planning sheet and then had to brainstorm and plan out their food chain.  After they completed their planning sheet, they paired up with a partner and shared what they came up with.  

    The next step was having students take to the computer to find an outline or a coloring page of the animal that they had at the top of their food chain.  Once they found this, I helped them size and print their outline on construction paper.  Students then typed and printed the labels they would need.  

       The next step was to use an craft knife to cut the flaps needed for each project.  This step was done by me, at home, in front of my tv that night.  I was able to stack a few different animals on top of each other so that I could cut multiple animals at the same time.  I promise it did not take that long at all!

    The next day, students glued an unlined index card on the back of their construction paper animal. They only applied glue around the edges of the index card and NOT where their pictures were going to be drawn.  Once this was completed, students glued the whole thing to a background color and got to work drawing, outlining and coloring their food chain.  The final step was to cut and glue on the labels that they printed the previous day.  The kids LOVED making

these, and they came out looking great!  ~Heather