Food Chain Discs — Who Eats What

A board and a set of picture discs showing animals and plants — grass, gazelle, tiger, eagle. Your child links them into food chains that actually work: the plant first, then the animal that eats it, then the one that eats that. It turns a science lesson into something you build with your hands.

How you play

1. Spread the discs out and find the plants first.
2. Put a plant at the start of a chain on the board.
3. Find the animal that eats it and place it next.
4. Add the predator that eats that animal.
5. Build as many correct chains as you can from the discs you have.

What it builds

• The idea of producers, consumers and predators, built rather than read
• Cause and effect across a whole system
• Sorting and ordering by a rule that is not colour or size
• Reasoning about why a chain does or does not work

Three ways to play it

• Remove one animal from a chain and talk about what happens to the rest
• Build a chain from your own country's animals
• Ask which creature could sit in two different chains

The details

• Ages: 3–6 years