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Hi My Name is Sol Jaurena and i'm an elementary education major. I'm curretnly a Junior in College and was wondering if any of you had any fun labs to do with kids. I'm thinking of some that have to do with food chains and food webs to introduce to 4rth-5th graders. I recently taught a group of 5th graders and they were pretty confused on what producers, consumers, and decomposers were. I had them make a food chain using yarn and some images but I was looking for more ideas.

Hi Sol,

The best way to reinforce the lesson of the food chains/web is by using videos that breaks it down for you. I know the website BrainPOP has interesting topics and fun activites for the students to do. Also, you can search up a video on Youtube that is related to the topic you would want the students to learn. Good Luck!

I agree with the above user that videos are a great resource for this topic! 

I've planned a food chain lesson before in which students are assigned organisms (with picture cards), and they have to find their associated food chains and then line up in the correct order and identify what part of the food chain they are. It's a fun group activity and feedback can be given to students immediately.

-Beth

I think videos are a great way to connect with the students and a great reinforcement to any lesson. Technology and videos are a huge part of students' lives and bringing into the classroom helps to really engage them. I find that educational videos also have a way of really breaking down the information and presenting it in a clear way with visuals, allowing the students to really absorb the information.