Food Webs

Trace paths of energy in a Georgia forest web and a salt marsh web.

Warm-up, learn, try it together, practice, then a quick check. About 15 minutes.

What children learn in Level 19

In real life, most animals eat more than one thing, and more than one animal eats them. Many food chains connect into a food web.
Here's a food web for a Georgia forest. Find the mouse. It eats grass seeds, acorns, and blackberries, and both the fox and the owl eat it.
Here's a web for a Georgia salt marsh, on the coast. The sun feeds the cordgrass and algae, and energy flows all the way to herons and raccoons.
To read a web, follow the arrows. They always point the way energy flows: toward the eater.

Georgia Standards of Excellence in Science:

S4L1.b — Develop simple models to illustrate the flow of energy through a food web/food chain beginning with sunlight and including producers, consumers, and decomposers.