Summary
How do plants get their food? This explainer shows how leaves use sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to make sugar and release oxygen. A strong lead-in to a plants or energy-flow unit for upper elementary.
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Teaching resources
Discussion questions
Discussion
Plants don't eat food the way animals do — they make it.
- What three things does a plant need to carry out photosynthesis?
- Where in the plant does photosynthesis mostly happen?
- What does the plant make, and what does it give off?
- Why does the energy in a plant's food originally come from the sun?
Quick work-a-long
Vocabulary: photosynthesis, chlorophyll, carbon dioxide, oxygen, glucose.
Try it: Write the photosynthesis “recipe” as an equation in words: sunlight + water + carbon dioxide → ? + ?