BRAINPOP GAME: Food Fight http://www.brainpop.com/games/foodfight/
With its two-player competitive setup, this interactive game is the perfect way to bring the family together and reinforce the classroom curriculum at home. Bringing to life the East African food chains in the Serengeti (which is a "tropical savanna" biome, available in the class textbook on page 101), "Food Fight" allows players to choose their own animal and add resources (i.e. producers, primary/secondary/tertiary consumers, etc) that will both deplete their competitor's population size and increase their own. In this grassland and woodland ecosystem, it's survival of the fittest! You must use your knowledge of ecosystem interconnectedness to outwit your partner!
Sheppard Software
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/kidscorner/games/producersconsumersgame.htm
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/kidscorner/games/foodchaingame.htm
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/kidscorner/games/producersconsumersgame.htm
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/kidscorner/games/foodchaingame.htm
This website offers two interactive games - "The Food Chain Game" and "The Producers, Consumers, and Decomposers Game." For the first, you drag pictures to set up an accurate food chain in the boxes provided. For the second game, you match pictures of plants, fungi, and animals to their trophic level label, which is a producer, consumer, or decomposer. Although simple games, they do provide more examples of the concepts discussed in science class to help test your mastery of them!
As the American Museum of Natural History's science website for kids, OLogy has a "Biodiversity" tab filled with icons that hold small activities to do with your child, like hands-on games and informational articles about different ecosystems, like "Magnificent Madagascar" and "Life in the City." Provided below is a printable PDF board game, "Endangered Species." the board game fits in with our unit's summative assessment, which involves researching a threatened species and understanding the human causes of its decline and the consequences of its extinction. The game even reinforces key vocabulary from our science unit, like invasive/introduced species! But the website also includes a book list, creative activities - like "Draw a Monarch Butterfly" and "Create Your Own Creature of Light" and "Make Your Own Biodiversity Stationary" - quizzes, polls, and interviews with experts about specific aspects of biodiversity.
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OLogy (n.d.). Endangered! board game. Retrieved from http://www.amnh.org/ology/features/stufftodo_bio/endangered.php
Murphy, R. (2012). Food chain game. Teachers Pay Teachers. Retrieved from http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Food-Chain-Game-158818
Murphy, R. (2012). Food chain game. Teachers Pay Teachers. Retrieved from http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Food-Chain-Game-158818
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC GAME: My Ocean
http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/media/my-ocean/?ar_a=1
http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/media/my-ocean/?ar_a=1
Corresponding with Chapter 4-4: "Aquatic Ecosystems," in our class biology textbook (pp. 106-112), this matching game presents different food chain obstacles - like over-hungry sea turtles or predatory eels - that are potential threats to the stability of their ecosystems. Therefore, the tasks revolve around maintaining balance, health, and happiness in the ecosystem, reinforcing the interconnectedness at play. The interactive game takes students through the Indian, Atlantic, Pacific, Antarctic, and Arctic oceans. Each ocean contains multiple levels. And in "player mode," players must travel sequentially through these levels in order to unlock the next ocean. Teaching food chains and ocean conservation, the game prompts players to add organisms to different ocean ecosystems that reflect real-life food pyramids and predator-prey relationships. Each level begins with a video introducing the ocean and ends with a quiz to assess the knowledge the player gained. At any point during play, players may access an ocean encyclopedia that provides information about the organisms in their mock ecosystems.
Some sample game scenarios are presented below!
CHOMP! Card Game Put away the UNO for a night and pick up CHOMP!: The Fast & Furious Food Chain Card Game! The game consists of a specialized deck of 52 cards which depict various sea creatures on a food chain--plankton, shrimp, little fish, big fish, seal, shark. The higher the creature is on the food chain, the more types of creatures it can chomp. Creatures cannot chomp their own kind, nor can they eat anything higher up on the food chain. Nobody can chomp an octopus or an electric eel, which are special action cards in the game. The game plays rather like the classic card game "War," with the superior creature "chomping" the others and taking the trick. The first player to collect all the cards wins the game. The rulebook includes several variations. This card game has won numerous awards: Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Award, Canadian Toy Testing Council (Highest Rating), Nick Jr. Magazine Best Toys Selection, and Dr. Toy's Best Vacation Products. Click here for the official game rules or download the PDF below.
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Some Titles to Consider for Family Movie Night!
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Raising Hope: BEE STORY Season 4, Episode 10
Hitting upon the accountability of man in preserving ecosystems and the importance of animal species due to interconnectedness, Virgina and Burt go undercover to expose a corporate pollution scandal at a kazoo factory. They deduce that the factory's negligence is killing all the bees in Natesville. Recognizing the necessity of bees to his gardening profession, Burt - flustered and afraid - embraces the cause due to his personal stake in the matter.
The Big Bang Theory: THE COOPER EXTRACTION Season 7, Episode 11
In Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder," we saw how a single butterfly's absence can change the world. So now let's take a look at how the hypothetical loss of Dr. Sheldon Cooper - a stereotype of the socially awkward, but ingenious scientist from the popular TV series, The Big Bang Theory - would affect his friends. How would their lives be different if he never existed? This episode touches upon this unit's ideas of interconnectedness and individual worth.
Community: HEROIC ORIGINS Season 4, Episode 12
A comedy on NBC, Community revolves around a group of unlikely friends at a community college. Abed - the group's movie-quoting brainiac - researches his friends' histories and discovers how often their stories overlap and intertwine prior to their enrollment at Greendale. For example, Abed discovers Annie and Troy attended the same high school and he encountered Shirely's children in a mall. Check out the human interconnectedness.
The Middle: THE OPTIMIST Season 5, Episode 20
Chronicling the comedic family dynamic of Frankie, Mike, Axl, Sue, and Brick Heck, this episode of The Middle grapples with Sue's college admission process and the consequences of Mike's misread social situation involving his youngest, Brick, and a seeming school bully. Stressed but determined, Sue fills out every scholarship essay form she encounters. In an effort to calm her daughter, Frankie takes her to a "spa day" at a crumbling facility that serves saltine crackers and cheese where she confesses what she believes to be her daughter's most valuable attribute. With Sue and Frankie's mother-daughter bonding time tapping into the concept of individual worth, Brick incessant request that Mike apologize to his friend after he confronted her at school snowballs from a misread situation to a creepy meeting in the park and a sit-down with the girl's parents. Just like "A Sound of Thunder" embraced the snowball effect through a butterfly, The Middle does so through a father's attempt to stand up for his son.