Ecosystem games for the classroom

Ecosystems are affected by biotic and abiotic factors. Abiotic factors are all of the non-living things in an ecosystem. These include things like climate, temperature, what nutrients are available, how much sunlight is available, pH levels, and much more.

Changes in abiotic factors can have strong impacts on an ecosystem. They can come from natural causes, like earthquakes, volcanoes, and floods. They can also be human-driven, like climate change, pollution, and deforestation. Review these steps and let your students work in teams to choose which kind of biome to create and research what plants thrive in that biome, along with what type of soil and what nutrients those plants need.

They might choose a desert biome with succulents, a temperate biome with flowers, or rainforest biomes with ferns.

Building the ecosystem is just the beginning. Ask students to monitor their ecosystems and keep track of them in journals. You might want to even gather measurements of temperature, plant growth, and humidity.

The most successful bottle ecosystems will thrive with absolutely no maintenance. In fact, one man in England has kept a simple, closed ecosystem going for forty years. Others may need minor attention, such as picking out dead leaves, or refreshing the water.

Let students draw their own, gradual conclusions about why their ecosystem is struggling, or how the plants and animals continue to survive. What they learn in maintaining bottle ecosystems may help them take care of plants and animals throughout their whole lives!

That makes learning about food webs and ecosystems a natural first step towards introducing lessons and activities about sustainability and climate change, and towards helping them become eager and informed stewards of our environment. Have you tried making environmental journals or bottled ecosystems in class?

Do you know of other activities relating to food webs or ecosystems? Share your stories and ideas in the comments below! We are using these interactive notebooks for learners in East Africa. We have used this in 3rd grade Science and now we are developing 4th grade Science and we are once again excited to use it. Your email address will not be published.

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A good way of doing this is first of all to identify a list of organisms under the different categories producers, primary, secondary and tertiary consumers. Teach them a bit about the diet of each organism. After that, create flash cards with these organisms on them either name or picture , shuffle the cards and ask kids to classify them according to their diets. After this exercise, place the different categories of organisms in their right positions imagine an ecosystem diagram has to be drawn and ask kids to place the various organisms under these categories.

After that, ask questions about each organism and make a link e. An arrow could be drawn from sunlight to green plants. Another question could be what do insects like grasshoppers and crickets feed on? Keep doing so until all the links have been established. At the end of the exercise make a review of all concepts that have been learned and get kids to explain them in their own words.

Find another ecosystem and attempt the same activity. Get worksheets about ecosystems and tell kids to classify different animals under various categories. Also make them to establish the links based on their understanding. From this point on you can try out different fun activities to reinforce understanding of all areas.

Math4childrenplus has an interactive online game on this page with several multiple choice questions that will aid kids on this topic. It is a pirate game that can also be played in a group. It is free and can be shared. Key concepts for kids to remember Ecosystem, sun, consumers primary, secondary, tertiary , decomposers, food chain and photosynthesis, carnivores, herbivores.

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