In an ecosystem, everything is connected to everything else, and the well-being of one can affect the well-being of all. It’s important for lower elementary and early childhood students to understand this concept and recognize that as humans, our actions have effects on all sorts of living things found in the communities and environments in which we live. Web of Life is a great way to introduce this concept of interconnectedness to your students!  It’s a fun, interactive K-2 classroom activity that has students explore a web of relationships within a forest community. This activity looks at the balance between humans and nature within a specific environment and has students identify series of cause-and-effect scenarios.

All you need to begin is a ball of yarn and the provided Character Cards, which each represent an essential member of a forest community. Each student will take on the role of one community member.  Read the provided story to your students while they are seated in a circle, and have them pass the ball of yarn between them when their character is mentioned.  Once the story is finished, and the ball of yarn has been passed to each student, your class will discover a complex web of connections within the forest community!

In the demo video, you’ll see an example of the web we created with our summer interns.