What's eating you?

For the past couple of weeks in science, the topic of discussion has been producers, consumers, and food chains. Not to be confused with FAST food chains, the regular run-of-the-mill type of food chains are those fun little paths that lead from producer to consumer -- from plant to animal.

Actually, that's been a very difficult point to get across -- the fact that animals cannot make their own food. Whenever I bring this up and tell the kids that as animals, they cannot make their own food, I always get a chorus of arguments.

"I can TOO make my own food! I can make a turkey sandwich, and sometimes my mommy lets me make macaroni and cheese!"

Maybe we should start watching the Food Network in class, to determine the difference between MAKING your food and PREPARING your food.

Anyway, over the weekend, I gave an extra credit homework assignment which was to illustrate your own food chain. I got some very interesting submissions. Here are a few of the proposed chains that we will probably not be seeing in nature anytime soon:

Corn --> Lion --> Shark

Beans --> Birds --> Fish --> Shark --> Whale

Plant --> Person --> Tiger

Strawberry --> Ferret --> Fox --> Alligator


These were all pretty amusing, but none of my kids this year included dinosaurs, as in years past. And I think that my favorite of all time, just because it was so strange to receive such an entry from one of my smarter kids:

Strawberry --> Squirrel --> Snake --> Chinese Person