We kicked off our latest science unit on Food Chains with a fun (and tiring) game! To begin, our class was divided into three different animals groups: grasshoppers, lizards, and hawks. Students explored the food chain in this grassland habitat and then made arm bands to identify themselves.
The object of the game for each animal is to survive as many rounds as you can by gaining enough energy and not getting eaten (tagged). Grasshoppers gain energy by finding cubes on the ground that represent plants, lizards gather their energy by eating grasshoppers, and hawks need to hunt lizards to find energy.
At the end of each timed round, animals that had not been eaten (tagged) needed to have a certain number of energy cubes to survive. Even though the hawks did not have any natural predators in this habitat, students quickly found out that they could not survive if there wasn't enough food to eat.
Click above to view one round of Catch Me If You Can.
