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Polar Bear Food Chains Activity for Kids

What does a polar bear eat? How does it get its energy? This simple printable polar bear activity for kids will help them learn and produce a science presentation on just this. Discover what a food chain is! How to create one and conduct simple research on the Arctic environment. So here go a Printable Polar Bear Food Chain Activity for Lower Primary and Early Elementary Kids.

Pinterest Image for Kids Science, A polar bears food chain printable activity for kids

What is a Food Chain

A food chain shows us that all of the animals are interconnected. In a food chain, there is a linear relationship between the producer and the consumers.

As we focus on 1 specific creature the food chain starts with the producer which is most likely to be a plant or other organism that photosynthesis taking in energy from the sun.

The last animal on the food chain is the predator.

In our simple Polar Bear Food Chain the producer is plankton (phytoplankton) and zooplankton. This is then consumed by the fish. The fish is predated by a seal or directly by the polar bear and then the polar bear eats the seal.

As there are many prey of the polar bear this simplification is there to make it easier for your lower primary and early elementary kids to research and follow the food chain.

Older kids could investigate further and produce a food web instead of a linear chain.

Learning Objectives for this Food Chain Activity for Kids

These are some of the areas that match the National Curriculum and Core Standards for Science

  • Explain a simple food chain.
  • Name some different sources of food for animals.
  • Use food chains to identify producers, predators and prey. *This is from Key Stage 2 but we will be introducing the words now

Materials Needed for your Arctic Polar Bear Food Chain Activity

We have included affiliate links to some of the products and resources as an associate we may earn from qualifying purchases.

Polar Habitat Food Chain available for FREE from our store

Access to the internet or reference books on the environment for research purposes

Glue

Scissors

Coloured Marker

Coloured Card Stock

Polar Bear Food Chain Activity for Kids

Start off by explaining that you are going to investigate what Polar Bears eat and where their energy comes from. Explain that you can discover it by producing a food chain to show what they eat, what eats their prey and right at the start what the producer of the energy is.

Polar Bears are a great example of a simple food chain that early elementary children can investigate they are charismatic creatures and often featured on nature programmes that they may watch or in books. So start off with what they know about what they eat.

Our first was that they were carnivores because they had big teeth so they ate meat – what sort of meat seals was the easy part of my oldest, he’s fascinated by nature programmes and was even able to name a couple of species of seal that he knew polar bears ate – Weddle seals and harp seals.

From there is became a little tricky – what did arctic seals eat? Over to the internet.

child researching the food chain of a polar bear to complete a printable activity to make the food web

I took this as an opportunity to steer him towards sites that will give information to him rather than images – he started off by going to google – and putting in what do seals eat and then clicking on images as a quick way to find out what they did eat. I moved away from the image tab to ALL and pointed him to the Wikipedia entry as a good source (for the elementary level it’s good as the information is easy to find and it’s reasonably accurate).

research on google to find zooplankton

We then looked for what they ate coming up with Arctic Char – which led us to finding out what Arctic Char ate and zooplankton which he hadn’t heard of before – so this time we used the image tab to discover what they looked like. It’s a good skill to teach children how to search on google effectively and when to use and not use the different tabs as well as filter out what sort of information is relevant.

making notes on the food chain to then use to create a science poster on the food chain

With our food chain from polar bear to plankton complete, we then sat and wrote some sentences – he decided that today would be a list format instead of full sentences which worked for this as recording his findings.

child cutting out a cartoon polar bear
child sticking down the animals in the food chain of the polar bear
child adding the title to a science poster Polar Bear Food Chain

Using the image sheet provided in the download we then cut out the animals and stuck them onto a display sheet to share our findings with arrows pointing toward who ate who.

work produced by a 1st and 2nd grade child on the polar bear food chain

Polar Region Books for Kids to Read Along with This Activity

I am a big fan of the DK Eyewitness Books – we have many in our collection and the mix of images that my youngest loves to explore and ask questions about as well as the text which is comprehensive and will work through most of the primary school is perfect for a non-fiction book that will last a while. The DK Arctic and Antarctic Eyewitness Book is no exception to this and as it covers both natural and man-made history it will help with learning more about these unique habitats on our planet.

There is so much history involved in the polar regions from the life of the Native Americans that have lived there for 1000’s of years to the explorers of the last few hundred years. This hands-on History book looks at the Native American people through crafts and activities.

Polar bears are endangered and it’s up to us to do our own bit to save them. This National Geographic Book Mission Polar Bear is great for your kids to discover more about these fantastic creatures as well as some great hands on activities you can do.

Check out our selection of Antarctica Books for a deep focus on that region.

More Polar Animal Themed Activities for Lower Primary Kids

Polar bears on a ice flow with text saying Winter Science Experiment How Do Polar Bears Stay Warm
penguin place value game
DIY Penguin Counting game

Conduct a fun Science Experiment with your kids to discover how do polar animals stay warm.

Practice place value with our fantastic Penguin Place Value Game.

Work on Counting – even, odd, skip counting with this fun DIY Penguin Counting Game to hop from ice-berg to Ice-Berg

Pinnable image for a polar bear food chain activity for kids
Author
Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.

3 Comments

  1. I love how your kiddos had to learn about the food chain before they built the collage!

  2. I love how you used the computer to involve technology. My kids were always so fascinated researching who ate whom =)

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