The Food Chain (10/26-10/30)

This is an example of a land food chain
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/kidscorner/foodchain/foodchain2.htm

Summary:

This week in class we started to learn about the food chain. We watched a video about the food chain, and then we had to answer a few questions. First you need to know that food chains always start with plants and end with animals. But remember, humans are animals. Humans are usually at the top of the food chain. But that does not means that they are always at the top, what if a lion ate the human! Then the lion would be at the top of the food chain. There are different types of food chains. If you want to see a full list then go to this website:
http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-food-chains.html.

In the video they talked about the ocean food chain. The ocean food chain is a food chain that happens in the ocean. Here is an example of an ocean food chain: phytoplankton (tiny little plants), get eaten by zooplankton (tiny animals that live in the ocean), which gets eaten by smaller fish like anchovies. Anchovies get eaten by bigger fish like tuna, then the humans often eat the bigger fish. Here is another example: seaweed gets eaten by sea urchins, and sea urchins get eaten by sea otters, and you never know, some humans eat sea otters. Who knows!

In the picture above there is a sample of a land food chain. A land food chain is a food chain that happens on land.  As you can see, this chain also starts with a plant and ends with an animal. This food chain starts with grass, then the grasshopper comes and eats the grass, after that the grasshopper gets eaten by a mouse, who gets eaten by a snake. Last, the hawk comes along and eats the snake. The hawk is at the top of this food chain. Unless some hunters come and kill it. 

I hope you learned what a food chain is in my examples. Science is about looking for connections.
In the episode the kids were trying to figure out how scum is related to a tuna fish sandwich. They even went underwater into the ocean! At the end they figured out that that they belonged to the same food chain.