The Food Chain

Outline
*Intro
-Topic
-Focus and learning goals
*Lesson
-The Sun
-Producers
-Consumers
-Decomposers
*Application


Intro


In this lesson, we are going to focus and learn about the Food Chain. We want the children to understand that there is a common order to life. Through the Suns energy , all the way to the top animal, the children need to see the progression of the food chain.We want to them to see how organisms need other organisms to survive and their roles in the chain.


Lesson 
Hey Kiddos,  Today we are going to talk about Food Chains.  Each food chain is very important to our environment, it keeps everything under control. Every animal needs energy to live, and animals get their energy from what they eat. A food chain shows you how each animal get it's food. To understands food chains, you have to start at the Sun.

The Sun gives off energy to animals and plants, but only plants can make their own food. This is called Photosynthesis. When the plant gets his energy from the sun, it goes through this special process and that is why we call them Producers. Every plant is a producer.

The second important link in a food chain are the Consumers. Consumers eat the producers. They need to eat the producers because that's how they get their energy to survive, they can't make their own food. There are 3 kinds of Consumers:
1. Herbivores- Animals that eat only plants.
2. Carnivores- Animals that only eat animals.
3. Omnivores- Animals that eat both plants and animals, Humans are omnivores.

And, the last link of a food chain are the Decomposers. Decomposers are Bacteria and Fungi. They eat dead plants and animals and break them down to go back into the dirt. This helps put all of the good things from what died, back to grow into something new later.

Application

-Choose and pick a few students to come up in front of the classroom.  Ask each one of them what they had for dinner the night before. Then trace the chain back to the producer along with the class. This should be a more personal way for them to see the line of a food chain.