Food Chains KS2

What is a food chain?

All the plants and animals that live together in an ecosystem are linked together by what they feed on. They rely on each other for survival. Food chains show how the organisms are linked through diet.

Food chains usually start with a green plant as plants are able to produce their own energy from the sunlight. For this reason, plants at the beginning of a food chain are called producers. Anything that eats a producer is called a consumer because it consumes the energy of the plants. Some consumers also eat other animals. When an animal hunts and eats another animal for food, they are called a predator. The animal it hunts and eats is called prey.

The arrows in a food chain show the direction of energy. The arrows in this diagram are showing that the rosebush gives energy to the aphid, the aphid gives energy to the ladybird, and the ladybird gives energy to the crow.  

A food chain showing the direction of energy from the rose bush to the crow

When should children learn about food chains?

The National Curriculum states that children in KS2 should learn about food chains in Year 4 as part of the 'Animals, including humans' strand. Children should:

• construct and interpret a variety of food chains, identifying producers, predators and prey.

PlanBee has several Science lesson that cover this objective in detail, giving children plenty of opportunities to create their own food chains from a selection of organisms, as well as considering how the delicate balance of ecosystems would be affected if a particular organism was removed from a food chain.