Materials

• Game cards
• Game board

Background

Matter and energy travel together through a food web. Energy is burned along the way, with most of it eventually being transformed into heat, which is not useful to sustain life. Matter, however, is reorganized as it is taken in and incorporated into the bodies of living things. Matter is not "lost" like energy—it gets passed around.

Goal

To win, players try to make the most matter cycles. (Even though they are making matter cycles, when they include producers and consumers, these are energy and matter links. Food is matter and carries energy.) A cycle can have just two cards (a producer and a decomposer) or it can have more (consumers that get energy and matter from the things that you connect them to.) However, players only get one point per cycle.

Getting Started

• Print out game cards. Use the cards from the Food Web Connections Game. Photocopy one copy each of the first and third pages. Photocopy two copies of the second page for each group of students. Cut and laminate if possible.

  Note: If you already copied the cards for the Food Web Connections Game, you can use those sets; however, you should remove some of the decomposers and producers from the pile.

• Print out the game board and laminate if possible.

Playing the Game

See the Cycles of Nature Directions for rules and strategy for playing the game.

Follow-up Questions

1. Why can you make a cycle that has only a producer and a decomposer? How is this like a real ecosystem?
2. Why do you think the game board shows different colors for the cycle above the ground and below the ground?