Construct a Food Web, Artscapes
September 1, 2009
By Cecilia Marrero
When you see a frog swiftly snatch an insect for a quick meal, a squirrel clutching a nut, or a colony of critters eating away at a piece of dead wood, they are all contributing more to our environment than many of us realize. The goal of the Food Web 
activity is to give the kids an understanding of the intricate web of relationships in the natural world as it focuses on the community of animals found at the Outdoor Activity Center and the food web they sustain.
In this activity, the delicately balanced energy exchange that exists between the different species found in the natural world is simplified by starting off with an interpretive hike at the OAC followed by a hands-on demonstration of what we see and hear in our local environmental communities. In the classroom, we gave the kids a specific animal or bacteria typically identified as having a major role in the food web as one of the following: producer, primary consumer, secondary consumer, herbivore, carnivore, omnivore, and decomposer. This activity allowed the children to imagine what animal occupies which trophic level in a food chain.
Trophic levels are the feeding positions that an organism occupies in a food chain. As producers, plants form the first trophic level. Herbivores, animals that eat only plants, are primary consumers that form the second trophic level. The third and fourth trophic levels are formed by carnivores, animals that eat other animals, and omnivores, animals who eat both plants and animals. Bacteria and fungi are decomposers and they feed off 
decaying matter breaking it down further into fine organic material.
After working so diligently, the kids compiled all of their artwork to create a webbed layout of their interconnected food web. This activity taught us to see animals and bacteria from a different perspective and to understand that each living organism plays an important role far beyond our general scope of the environment.
