How-t0 Guide - Ocean Food Web

Food webs and Food chains are a very important part of Ocean Habitat study. While Food chains are pretty simple to understand, Food webs can be a bit confusing. Here is a very easy project illustrated step-by-step which gives hands on learning for Marine Food Web.

1.Start with making a list of animals you want to include. You can add the number of animals depending on the age of the child/ren involved.Its always a good idea not to have too many animals from every group to keep things simple.

2.Search for images of the animals from old magazines, or you can simple write the names of the animals on sticky notes. (Please abstain from drawing the pictures of animated objects.)

3.Take a big enough piece of card board. To include the element of fun (and mess) let the children paint it to resemble a sea.

Or you can cut and paste coloured papers instead of painting. Whatever you do don’t forget to have fun.  And don’t forget to include the sun. 4.Squeeze in some cloud study by making clouds out of cotton wool. 

5.Once the background is ready start pasting pictures of animals, or sticky notes with animal names. Discuss with your child where to put each animal. Does whales live near ocean bed? Where do they think planktons are found etc.

6.Once the animals are “settled” draw a push pin across each animal. You can cover the back of the card board with another layer of card board or foam if the ends of the pins are poking through.

7. Now you can start the real “spinning” of the web. Tie a rope around the push pin on the sun and encourage your child to think of an organism who relates to sun in a food web and how. For example sun is related to the phylo planktons and sea plants as it gives them energy to make their own food. Take one string from the sun to sea plants and another one to planktons.

8.From planktons and plants to krill and other small creatures like jelly fish, sea star etc. 

9.Carry on until all the animals have the yarn/string atleast once, some will have it over and over again like the squid etc, and a giant and complex web is formed on your board.  

10.A completed food web.