Nutrient Games

 

STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO:
- Track path of specific nutrients through the soil cycle.
- Recognize that matter is cycled within and among ecosystems.

GUIDING QUESTION: How does matter cycle through the ecosystem?

MATERIALS:
- Poster board, empty pizza boxes, or other game board materials
- Art supplies
- Index cards (optional - for students to incorporate "draw a card" commands into their games)
- Dice

CLASS ACTIVITIES:
1. This activity ties back in with the cycle posters that students made in Week 8. Review with students how nutrients moved through the ecosystem in some of the cycles that they have studied.
2. Students should design and make board games that show how nutrients pass through different living and non-living parts of ecosystems. Game pieces should represent nutrients, with each group making a game for a different nutrient cycle. For instance, in a game based on the calcium cycle, the game pieces could begin in the soil, be absorbed by a plant root and become a part of a plant leaf, and then be eaten by a deer, become part of the deer, be eaten by a wolf, become part of the bones of the wolf, and eventually become part of the soil again after the bone is broken down by weather. To emphasize the concept of cycles, all games should be cycles - in order to win the game, nutrients must get back to where they started.
3. Students should spend all of Wednesday and part of Thursday completing their games.