Understanding Ecosystems
Guided Tour (5)
Activity Tutorials (21)
- Synonyms & Similarities - Sex vs. Gender
- Conceptual Learning
- One Problem...Multiple Perspectives
- Thinking About Business
- Enduring Ideas: Sense of Place
- Self-similarity and Thinking
- Understanding Ecosystems
- Controllable Factors
- Perspectives on Art
- Deconstructing Distinctions: Sex and Gender
- Us and Them
- Metaphors and Similes
- Building Analogies
- Multiplying, Dividing and Factoring Units
- Number Line
- Using Dry Erase and Stickers
- Organizing Systems
- Distinction: Context Matters
- The Content and Context of a Distinction
- Making A Relationship Explicit
- 3 Types of Perspective Taking
Expert Talks (13)
Customer Testimonials (10)
Video Summary
Our global ecosystem is one of the most important systems your child can learn about. Ecosystems are very complex, with many different parts and processes?nd developing a broad understanding of how this natural beauty fits together can be difficult. You can use ThinkBlocks to teach your children to think systemically about our environment. You can use this activity to explore ecosystems of any scale. This activity teaches your child about the parts and interactions within ecosystems at every scale, which are crucial for understanding ecology and for developing a systems perspective on the world.
Celebrate Earth Day on April 12th with these educational and fun activities for ages 3 to 6, 6 to 12, and 12 and over. They will learn important content knowledge while developing essential thinking skills and learning to think about and care about the Earth.
Video transcript: Our global ecosystem is one of the most important systems your child can learn about.
Ecosystems are very complex, with many different parts and processes…and developing a broad understanding of how this natural beauty fits together can be difficult. In the following activity, we’ll demonstrate how to use TB to teach your children about the basic components of ecosystems, and how they interact to form the world of nature that we see around us. Label a TB with a type of ecosystem you want to explore. Here we use “Forest,” but you can use any ecosystem you can think of. Ask your child “what’s in a forest?” They’ll probably respond with things like “trees” and “bears.” Label TB with their answers. Now group their answers by type. Ask your child “what kind of groups are these.” They should say things like “plants” and “meat-eaters.” Label the groups and place them inside FOREST. Put in a few other parts of the FOREST ecosystem, such as CLIMATE and GEOLOGY. Now explore what would happen to the ecosystem if these parts are changed. Ask “what would happen if the meat-eaters went away?” or “How would humans affect this ecosystem?” Use the blocks to express interactions between the different parts. You can use this activity to explore ecosystems of any scale.
This activity teaches your child about the parts and interactions within ecosystems at every scale, which are crucial for understanding ecology and for developing a systems perspective on the world.