Plants Make the Food Everything Else Eats

Lab Brief #12

🎯 Your mission

Run the experiment. Find out what really happens.

⚡ The twist

What the body does in one minute is wilder than any cartoon.

What you'll learn

Plants use sunlight to make their own food. Animals cannot do this, so every animal is eating a plant, or eating something that ate a plant. That is why plants are called producers.

Key words

producer
A living thing, such as a plant, that makes its own food using sunlight.
consumer
A living thing that eats other living things because it cannot make its own food.

Make a hypothesis first

Guess: how does the body solve this problem?

Say your guess out loud — then find out if you were right.

Get ready

🧰 What you need

picture cards
paper

⚠️ Safety first

Have an adult check your set-up before you start, and tidy everything away afterwards.

Step 1 of 4 · Read

Think about what you just learned: say what "producer" and "consumer" mean in your own words before you start.

Step 2 of 4 · Do

Sort pictures of ten living things into producers and consumers. Then trace any one consumer back through the chain until you reach a plant.

Step 3 of 4 · Observe

Record what actually happened, including anything that did not match what you expected.

Step 4 of 4 · Record

Write a conclusion that answers the question this lesson opened with, and state your uncertainty.

Question 1 of 2

Which living thing makes its own food?

How sure are you?😐 maybe

Question 2 of 2

Animals are called consumers because they:

How sure are you?😐 maybe

Mind = blown

🦠 You have more bacterial cells in your body than human cells.

Nice work!

You got 0 of 2 right.

Next: Living Things Change the Place They Live All lessons

🎯

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✨ More to explore

🌍 Where you see this in real life: This is why plants grow toward windows and why scabs form.

🏆 Stretch challenge (try it this week): Watch a plant or pet for 5 minutes today and write down what you noticed.

👨‍👩‍👧 For the dinner table: “Tell me something you noticed about your own body today.”

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Plants Make the Food Everything Else Eats

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