Plant and Animal Communities

Examples: Lizards, snakes, alligators, crocodiles, turtles and tortoises. Tortoises live on land and turtles live in the water.

What do plants and animals need?

1. Explain to the students that plants and animals have needs in order to survive.
2. Tell the students that plants need water, sunlight, soil and air (carbon dioxide) to survive. Explain that people and animals give off carbon dioxide when they breathe out. Tell the students that plants make their own food from each of these needs. Do the following experiments with the students.

   What happens when a plant doesn't get enough light?

   a. Attach a piece of black paper to the top of a leaf using paper clips.
   b. Check the leaf each day for one week. Observe and describe what the leaf looks like each day. Have the students record results using words and pictures in a science journal.
   c. Discuss what happens when a plant doesn't get the sunlight it needs to survive.

   What happens when a plant doesn't get enough carbon dioxide?

   a. Cover a few leaves of the plant with petroleum jelly.
   b. Check the leaves each day for one week. Observe and describe what is happening to the leaves each day. Have the students record the results in a science journal using pictures and words.
   c. Discuss what happens when a plant doesn't get enough carbon dioxide.

3. Animals need food, water, a home, and oxygen to breathe in order to survive. Plants give off oxygen. Land animals get oxygen from the air by breathing with their lungs. Insects get oxygen by breathing through tiny hole in their bodies, and water animals get oxygen from the water. Animals don't make their own food, but they have body parts that help them to get their food. Do the following experiment with the students.

   How do animals that live in the water get oxygen?

   a. Explain to the students that water plants help to add oxygen to the water.
   b. Fill the jar up with water and water plants.
   c. Put the bowl on top of the jar and carefully flip it over so that the jar is upside down in the bowl.
   d. Pour a few inches of water into the bowl.
   e. Slide the four pennies underneath the rim of the jar.
   f. Leave the bowl and jar in the sun for a few hours. Oxygen bubbles will start to form on the plants and float to the top of the jar.

4. Make a Venn diagram of plant and animal needs.

   

   Forest and Pond Communities

   1. Explain to students that the forest is a place where many trees and smaller plants grow. Many kinds of animals make their homes in the forest.
   2. Read Forest Bright, Forest Night? by Jennifer Ward. Talk about some of the different animals and plants that live in a forest and pond. Make a list of the animals.
   3. Read Pond Plants by Ernestine Giesecke and discuss the plants that live around the pond. Explain that the plants and animals work together to make a community. Plants provide animals with food and shelter, and animals also help plants.

   How do plants help animals?

   1. Explain to the students that many animals make their homes out of plants. Read Animal Homes by Diane James and Sara Lynn to the students. Discuss how animals use plants to make their homes.
   2. Explain to the students that another way that plants help animals is by providing food. Many animals eat plants. Animals that only eat plants are called herbivores. Animals that eat plants and other animals are called omnivores, and animals that only eat other animals are called carnivores. However, even though some animals only eat other animals, all animals depend on plants.
   3. Tape the Food Chain Picture Cards to the board vertically. Put the grass at the bottom, the cricket, the frog next, then the snake, and the hawk last (at the top). Explain that a cricket eats grass, so grass is the beginning of the food chain. The food chain is the path of food from one animal to another. Next, a frog eats the cricket. A snake eats the frog, and finally a hawk eats the snake. What would happen if all of the grass died? Would the hawk be able to stay alive even though he doesn't eat grass?

      Sing the following song sung to the tune of "The Farmer in the Dell."
      

      The Food in the Forest
      
      The cricket eats some grass; the cricket eats some grass,
      Hi ho the forest-o, the cricket eats some grass.
      
      The frog eats the cricket; the frog eats the cricket,
      Hi ho the forest-o, the frog eats the cricket.
      
      The snake eats the frog; the snake eats the frog,
      Hi ho the forest-o, the snake eats the frog.
      
      The hawk eats the snake; the hawk eats the snake,
      Hi ho the forest-o, the hawk eats the snake.
      
      That's how the food chain works, that's how the food chain works,
      Hi ho the forest-o, that's how the food chain works.

      
      
   4. Read the Dancing Deer and the Foolish Hunter to the class. Relate the chain in the story to the food chain that the students just learned about. Discuss what is fantasy and what is real in the story.

   How do animals help plants?

   1. Explain to the students that animals help plants too. Read the book How and Why Seeds Travel by Elaine Pascoe.
   2. Discuss the different ways that animals help seeds to travel. Hold up the seeds and ask how an animal would help them to travel. Place the seeds on the piece of fake fur and see if any stick. Ask if these seeds would be spread through droppings, or if they would be spread through fur?
   3. Insects drink nectar from flowers. When an insect takes a drink of nectar, it picks up pollen from the flower and carries it from plant to plant helping to make new plants grow.

      Try this experiment:

      1. Use a real flower and show the students what pollen looks like.
      2. Sprinkle some cornmeal into the center of the artificial flowers.
      3. Dip the plastic insect's legs and mouthparts into the water.
      4. Show the insect travel from flower to flower picking up "pollen" on its body and spreading it to the other flowers. Explain that this will help new flowers to grow.
   
   

   Extensions

   • Read Frog in a Bog by John Himmelman. Make a cause and effect chart using the events in the story.

   Family Connections

5. Have the students observe animal and plant life in their neighborhood.
6. Encourage students to teach family members what they have learned.
   
   

   Assessment Plan

   • Check student journals for understanding of the concepts taught.
   • Ask students to name two ways that plants help animals, and two ways that animals help plants.
   • Ask students to identify characteristics of animals in each of the six kingdoms.
   
   

   Bibliography

   Research Basis

   Gallenstein, N. (2005). Engaging young children in science and mathematics. Journal of Elementary Science Education, Volume 17.

   A key element for children in understanding science and mathematics knowledge on the early childhood level is through active, creative, and intellectual engagement. According to Jerome Bruner, instruction should include a variety of developmentally appropriate techniques. These techniques include the representation of knowledge through actions, drawings, and words. The process skills of observing, communicating, and inferring are also crucial to the understanding and problem solving in science and mathematics. In addition, basic mathematics concepts--such as comparing, sorting, counting, and graphing--are crucial to the understanding and organization of data in science.