Plants, animals and ecosystems activities

Growing and connecting

Follow energy through plants, pollination, seeds and food webs.

1. 1

   Where does a plant get the material for growth?

   Follow water and carbon dioxide into a simplified light-powered sugar-making model.

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2. 2

   What does a seed need before it starts growing?

   Compare moisture, oxygen and suitable temperature around an imagined viable seed.

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3. 3

   How can a visitor help a flower make seeds?

   Move a pollen-carrying visitor between a donor and a compatible flower.

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4. 4

   How can a seed travel away from its parent?

   Compare structures that can help seeds move by wind, attachment or floating.

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5. 5

   Why is a food web more than one chain?

   Trace feeding connections and the direction matter and energy can move.

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Life in a habitat

Explore resources, decomposers, camouflage and connected habitats.

1. 1

   What happens when living things share a limited resource?

   Divide a fixed pool among identical imagined resource users.

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2. 2

   How do nutrients return from dead material?

   Follow a nutrient marker through dead material, decomposers and plant uptake.

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3. 3

   Why can an animal be hard to spot?

   Compare the same drawn animal against contrasting backgrounds.

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4. 4

   Can a small sample reveal every species?

   Sample a known virtual habitat and compare observations with its full grid.

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5. 5

   Why can a corridor matter between habitat patches?

   Connect suitable patches and follow an imagined animal along available routes.

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Keep exploring

Read more in Life Science encyclopedia articles, with reading controls on each article. For printable practice, explore Maths worksheets and answer guides.