Project Playbook: Educator Edition
Pop Bottle Ecosystem
Model and observe ecosystem interactions with living and nonliving things.
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL — LEVEL 3
An ecosystem is a community of organisms living within the same environment. For this project, kids will build a thriving ecosystem they can put in the window at home. Add a little fishy friend and this project relies on you daily to keep the ecosystem healthy and balanced.
- Green plants are autotrophs, or producers, which means they make their own food from sunlight.
- The greatest number of plant and animal species are found in the rainforest biome.
- Oxygen currently makes up about 21 percent of the gases in the planet’s atmosphere
MATERIALS NEEDED:
❏ Empty pop bottle
❏ Potting soil
❏ Aquarium rocks
❏ Small fish
❏ Small plant
❏ Coffee filters
DIRECTIONS:
- Cut the top off of your pop bottle.
- Fill the bottom of the bottle with small aquarium rocks.
- Fill the bottle up halfway with water. Add any aquarium toys or objects.
- Put your fish in the water, it’s their new home.
- Cut a small hole above the water level to put fish food through.
- Turn the top of the bottle over, the cut off part. Line this with the coffee filters.
- Fill the top of the bottle with a small layer of potting soil.
- Add your plant and nestle it in the soil.
- Place the inverted top into the bottle, above the fish, with its mouth resting in the water.
- Place it at home in a window where it can get sunlight. The water will grow rich with nutrients from the fish, which you must feed daily. The fish-water nutrients will feed the plant and help it grow healthy.
OBJECTIVE: Kids will be able to conduct observations from experimentation and literature to identify patterns in what living things need to live.
ESSENTIAL QUESTION(S):
- What do living things need to survive?
- Do plants and animals have the same requirements?
ENGAGE / EXPLORE:
1. Create the pop bottle ecosystem with your child.
2. Set up a plant without water.
3. Observe your ecosystem and plant without water for several days.
a. Feed fish daily;
b. Water for plant should come from the fish area;
c. Should be placed in a well-lit window in a temperature-controlled area.
EXPLAIN:
1. Ask child to identify patterns from their daily observations:
a. Of the plant?
b. Of the fish?
2. Read books and ask questions about the topic.
a. Potential literature
i. How a Seed Grows, Helene J. Jordan
ii. Cactus Hotel, Brenda Z. Guiberson
iii. What’s Alive?, Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld
iv. I Am a Living Thing, Bobbie Kalman
b. Ask child what living things need:
i. Animals?
ii. Plants?
ELABORATE:
1. Have child complete the “What Do Living Things Need” worksheets.
a. Support them with cutting, pasting, and reasoning.
Educational Standards
NGSS CONNECTION:
K-LS1-1. Use observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals (including humans) need to survive.
COMMON CORE CONNECTION:
ELA/Literacy
W.K.7 Participate in shared research and writing projects (e.g. explore a number of books by a favorite author and express opinions about them).
K.MD.A.2 Directly compare two objects with a measurable attribute in common, to see which object has “more of”/”less of” the attribute, and describe the difference.
MP.2 Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
MP.4 Model with mathematics.
MP.5 Use appropriate tools strategically.
DOK:
Level 3: Strategic Thinking
Level 4: Extended Thinking