Learning with poop?

Yep.

Learning with poop.

(not real poop. I promise)

So after reading Hope and Wade King’s book The Wild Card, I remember reading/seeing the Jurassic Park transformation that Hope King did and the food web activity she did with dinosaur poop. (again, not real poop).

So I adapted it to fit my students and standards. And 3rd Graders in Virginia do not need to know about dinosaurs, but they do learn about the rain forest.

So I came up with a list of animals and plants that belong in a food web with a panther at the top. Then it was simply a matter of printing out those pictures and hiding them in my “poop” (more on that in a minute)

The kids then had to dig through the poop to find the pictures of the various animals and plants that might have found their way into the panthers stomach.

Then they filled out a food web using what they found in the “specimen” and use some additional information to determine what was making the panthers sick.

Now, on to the poop.

It’s actually easy to make. Basically I mix a few boxes of pudding and a few boxes of cake/brownie mix (I buy it on clearance) with some water – not too much though. The key is to keep things liquid enough to move around but not so much liquid that it’s soupy.

For extra texture, I added some grass clippings and black beans. It really added to the gross-out factor AND to the engagement.

To keep the photos of animals and plants in the poop from getting all wet and distorted, I cut them out and laminated them 4 or 5 times. (This might seem like over-kill, but last year when I did this I only laminated it twice, liquid got into the images) I also did not hide them in the poop until right before the kids came back from lunch to begin the assignment.

Also, gloves and plastic table covers are a MUST with this activity. It may be food-based and not real poop, but this encourages the kids to dig in and it keeps the mess much more contained. And with 3rd graders? The more contained the mess is, the better.