Jungle Jeopardy: An Ecosystem Game
What Is This Game?
Now that your kids are experts on life in the jungle, they can try keeping a whole jungle ecosystem alive! This game allows players to see how the different species of plants and animals in a rainforest depend on one another, and to experiment with how changing the amount of one resource affects the whole ecosystem. Their goal is to put together a balanced ecosystem, in which each animal has enough food to survive over a period of 12 days. The longer their ecosystem lasts, the more points they will earn for their sticker collections.
- Was it easy or hard to keep the animals and plants in your ecosystem alive for 12 days? If it was hard, what made it hard?
- What surprised you about the number of plants and animals you needed in order to keep your ecosystem balanced? Why does your ecosystem need so many plants?
- The flying dragon lizards live almost their entire lives in the trees. What might happen if their tree homes are cut down?
- What plants and animals would you include if you designed a game like this for your neighborhood? How many of each would you include?
Explore Some More
Green Space Inventory
Next time you are out walking in the neighborhood, make a note of all the open green spaces you find - lawns, gardens, parks, even the landscaped traffic islands in the middle of many large roads. When you return home, draw a simple map of your neighborhood, labeling the streets you walked on. Color in all the locations where you found green spaces. Is there more or less green space in your neighborhood than you thought before? What does this tell you about how many animals can live in your neighborhood?