Food Chain Jenga

Age

Elementary School, Middle School, High School

Format

Hands-on

Materials

   Food Chain Jenga 

Safety Precautions

Science Theatre demonstrators must keep the safety of themselves and their audience in mind at all times. All Science Theatre demonstrators must have read through the Safety Training page. The ST Safety Box with first aid kit, fire extinguisher, etc. should always be available to demonstrators. Always wear safety gloves, glasses, and a labcoat if handling chemicals; always perform potentially dangerous demonstrations at a safe distance from the audience; and always keep a very close eye on any volunteers you call from the audience. Falling Jenga blocks could hit someone in the eye and cause permanent damage. Use caution.

Preparation

Set up Jenga tower.

Demonstration

Integrate what to say with these steps

The colored blocks represent different animals in the food chain.

Blue – bugs

Green – frogs

Purple – snakes

Pink – hawks

Or you can pick your own.

This demo could be done in various ways, depending on what you want to teach. Here’s one idea:

Have the kids try to take out all of the jenga blocks representing one animal, such as frogs. The tower should fall, demonstrating how the food web would collapse if one of its members were to die off due to disease or human intervention. Explain how even though hawks don’t eat bugs, if there were fewer bugs, frogs couldn’t live, then snakes couldn’t live and eventually the hawks would be affected.

What to Say

Explain that the food chain is important to our lives as well, not just animals. If the food chain collapses, we could find ourselves without food, or in an environment that is not very biodiverse (you could also explain biodiversity – a healthy ecosystem has many different plants and animals. That way if one species dies out, the rest are not affected)

Real Life Examples

Real life examples are everywhere around us! Food chains are used to describe how animals survive and how the natural world works.