What’s For Dinner? – 4/5yr
At a glance: Children will discover that different
animals require different foods.
Time requirement
Goal(s)
1 hour
To understand that different animals like
different foods
Group size and grade(s)
Objective(s)
4/5 yr olds
5-11 year olds
1. Name 2 things that each of the
following would eat: herbivore,
omnivore, carnivore, insectivore
2. Identify adaptations on
herbivores and carnivores
3. Work on gross motor skills
Materials
Food jars
Food tokens
Pictures of hornbill, mouse, rhino, and
tiger
Felt giraffe “tongue”
Glue sticks
Brads
Paper plates
Crayons/markers
Theme
Animals require different foods to
survive.
Sub-themes
1. Animals have different adaptations
for finding and eating food.
Academic standards
National Science
Educational Standards
Benchmarks for Science
Literacy (Project 2061)
Ohio Science Academic
Content Standards
Kentucky Core Content—
Science
Indiana Science Standards
What’s For Dinner?, March 2011
List relevant standards
Use numbers when possible.
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Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden
Background
Because animals cannot produce their
own food in the way that plants do, they
must consume other plants or animals to
acquire the nutrients they need to
survive. Animals eat a variety of
different kids of food. Some are picky
eaters or “specialists” and focus on one
type of food. An example of this would
be a vampire bat. Others are walking
garbage disposals or “generalists” and
eat a wide variety of foods. An example
of this would be an opossum. Most
animals fall into the middle with specific
dietary needs or preferences, but a
willingness to meet those
needs/preferences with a variety of
different food sources. In general,
animals are classified by these diets or
food sources into categories such as:
browser, grazer, omnivore, herbivore,
carnivore, and many more.
A lot about what an animal might eat can
be determined by looking at their teeth.
To go back to the previous examples, a
vampire bat has special scalpel-like front
teeth that scrape the skin and allow them
to get their blood meal while opossum
have several different kinds of teeth (like
us) that include sharp canines for
gripping and piercing food and flat
molars for chewing/grinding food.
Despite what they eat, all of these
animals depend on each other to survive.
They all serve as a food source to,
population control for, or nutrient
recycler for each other.
Vocabulary
Browser – an herbivore that primarily
eats from short trees and shrubs.
Carnivore – an animal that hunts and
eats meat.
Grazer – an herbivore that primarily eats
grasses and sedges.
What’s For Dinner?, March 2011
Herbivore – an animal that eats only
fruit and vegetation.
Omnivore – an animal that eats plants
and animals.
Ruminant – an animal that regurgitates
its food and chews its cud.
Activity
Welcome and Introduction
Getting ready
You will need:
Doing the activity
Welcome the group to “What’s For
Dinner?”. Introduce the instructor and
the children, allowing them to share
something interesting about themselves
(favorite food). Introduce the topic:
What animals Eat.
Wrap up
n/a
Cookie Jar Relay
Getting ready
You will need:
At least one cookie jar/food
canister
Pictures of hornbill, tiger, and
rhino
Food cards
Doing the activity
1. Explain that you are going to
play a game and discover what
some different animals might eat.
2. Place the food jar at the end of
the room with a picture of an
animal taped onto the cookie jar.
Ask kids to line up behind you.
3. Show them pictures of the
cookies, leaves, deer, pigs,
insects and berries and then
scatter them around the room.
Explain that they will take turns
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Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden
to run out pick a food card and
put it into the food jar. Tell them
that each child will have a turn.
4. Tell the kids you are going to be
change the animal that they are
collecting for each round. Place
the picture of the rhino on the
cookie jar and talk about which
of the foods (cookie, leaves, deer,
or berries) the rhino would like to
eat. Play the game again, this
time asking the kids to pick cards
that the rhino would eat!
5. Repeat until all the animals have
had a chance of being on a food
jar.
Rhino
Leaves and grass
cards
Tiger
Deer and pig
cards
Hornbill
berries and insect
cards
6. Review what the different animal
ate. What would we like best?
Why can’t we eat cookies all the
time?
Wrap up
Thank kids for being such great cooks
for our different animals.
Zoo Hike
Getting ready
You will need:
Felt giraffe tongue (measured to
be length of real giraffe’s tongue)
Doing the activity
Giraffe
Eating/Food
May eat up to 75 pounds/day
Favorite leaves are acacia leaves
(thorns on these trees are long
but don’t stop giraffe because of
thick saliva and 18-inch tongue)
Ruminant – stomach has 4
compartments that digest the
leaves it swallows. After they
swallow the leaves the first time,
a ball of leaves will travel all the
way back up the throat into the
mouth for more grinding. Can
quickly eat leaves on a savannah,
and then retire somewhere safe
and regurgitate them and take
time to chew them again and
remove as much of the nutrients
as possible.
Acacia leaves have a lot of water
so giraffes can go without
drinking for a long time.
Misc.
Tallest land animals (18 feet)
Heart is 2 feet long and weighs
about 25 pounds.
Can run up to 30 mph
Have the same number of
vertebrae in their necks as we do.
Red Pandas
Eating/Food
Red pandas spend up to 13 hours
a day foraging for bamboo,
eating only the youngest, most
tender leaves.
Pandas have a small, thumb-like
bone that sticks out from the
wrist that helps them grasp
bamboo shoots
Eat other food besides bamboo
including some roots, fruit,
grasses, acorns, lichens, small
animals
Misc.
Live in the mountain forests of
Asia
Can live to be 14 yrs old
Can weigh up to 14 lbs
A baby was born here last year
Wrap-up
What’s For Dinner?, March 2011
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Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden
Do a head-count and head back to the
classroom.
Animal Encounters
Getting ready
You will need:
2 of the following: snake,
hornbill, tenrec/hedgehog
Doing the activity
Hornbill
Diet consists mostly of ripe fruit
and insects
Can catch insects in flight (can
demo this with a piece of balledup newspaper). Will then rub the
insect against a branch to break
up the exoskeleton before
swallowing
Will fly to the front line of a
brush/grass fire and catch insects
and small reptiles that are fleeing
the fire (have special eyelash-like
feathers to keep soot out of their
eyes during this)
While female is sitting on eggs,
the male will feed her and,
eventually the young be
catching/picking food and
bringing it back to the nest.
Snake
Are carnivores and, as adults, can
feed on a variety of animals such
as rodents, birds, even other
snakes! (food choice depends on
species of snake).
Use constriction to subdue their
prey then swallow whole, usually
head-first
Teeth are small, sharp, and all the
same size/shape and are recurved meaning that they point
backward to prevent prey from
escaping.
What’s For Dinner?, March 2011
Muscle contractions move the
prey down the throat and into the
snake’s stomach where super
digestive enzymes in stomach
process every part of the prey
(even hair and toenails).
The size of prey that a snake can
eat is determined by the size of
the snake. A snake cannot
swallow an animal that is larger
around than the largest part of
their own body.
Hedgehog
Specialty eaters – insectivores
Teeth are sharp and uniform –
good size for biting through
insect exoskeletons.
Long whiskers on face serve as
sensory organs for locating prey
like crickets, beetles, and other
arthropods.
Sense of smell is also acute and
used to sniff out food or danger!
Armadillo
Armadillos dig into insect
colonies and bark with their
strong front claws to feed on ants
and termites.
Most species forage for food in
the early morning and spend a
good portion of the rest of the
day sleeping in burrows they
have dug.
They have very poor eyesight,
and utilize their keen sense of
smell to hunt.
Strong legs and huge front claws
are used for digging, and long,
sticky tongues for extracting ants
and termites from their tunnels.
In addition to bugs, armadillos
may eat small vertebrates, plants,
and some fruit, as well as the
occasional carrion meal.
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Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden
Wrap up
Thank kids for listening and wash hands.
Go on a scavenger hunt at a local
park or the Zoo and see how
many herbivores, omnivores, and
carnivores you can find.
Craft Time – Dinner Plates
Getting ready
You will need: whole paper plate with
hole drilled in center, paper plate with
two wedges (opposite of each other) cut
out and hole drilled in center, brads,
gluesticks, pictures of herbivore,
omnivore, and carnivore,
crayons/markers
Resources
Doing the activity
1. Review with the group what
herbivores, carnivores, and
omnivores liked to eat. Explain
that you are going to make dinner
plates for these animals.
2. Next, pass out one of each kind
of paper plate to each child.
Attach the plate with wedges on
top of the whole plate and fix
with a brad.
3. Next, have them glue a picture of
each type of animal onto the
plate.
4. Finally, have them draw the food
that each animal would eat on the
plate, opposite of each
corresponding animal.
Smithsonian National Zoo:
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/Small
Mammals/fact-3bandarmadillo.cfm
Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden:
http://www.cincinnatizoo.org/animals/m
ammals/RedPanda.html
National Geographic:
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/a
nimals/mammals/armadillo/
Wrap up
Thank kids for coming and encourage
them to look for some herbivores,
carnivores, and omnivores in the Zoo or
even in their backyard.
Assessment
Extension
Look for wildlife in your own
backyard and observe what they
might be eating.
What’s For Dinner?, March 2011
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