How Do Plants Make Food? | Botany Basics

Check for Understanding

• What is the process plants use to make their own food?

• What three ingredients does a plant need to make food?

Take It Further

• When plants make their food, they release the oxygen we need to survive. What would happen to us and our environment if half of all the plants disappeared? What makes you think that?

Create

• Draw a tree or a plant with green leaves, but instead of using a green colored pencil, try painting using the chlorophyll from real green leaves. Roll the leaves into a ball and rub them on the paper like a paintbrush. Go a step further: add a diagram showing the process of photosynthesis with your plant. For an extra challenge, add yourself to the diagram.

Make a Personal Connection

• What recipe do you like to make that nourishes you?
• Take three deep breaths and pose like your favorite plant for 30 seconds. For example, you can stand tall with arms wide like a big tree with branches or move side to side like poppy flowers blowing in the wind. Next, imagine absorbing the sun and carbon dioxide from the air, pulling the water up through your roots, and creating energy to sustain you. How did it feel to be a plant?

• LS1.A: STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION
  How do the structures of organisms enable life’s functions?
• LS1.C: ORGANIZATION FOR MATTER AND ENERGY FLOW IN ORGANISMS
  How do organisms obtain and use the matter and energy they need to live and grow?
• LS4.C: ADAPTATION
  How does the environment influence populations of organisms over multiple generations?