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Animal Nutrition

Understand that animals, including humans, need the right types and amounts of nutrition, and that animals cannot make their own food

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What a learner can do afterwards

  • Name the main food groups: carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, fibre, water
  • Explain that animals get energy from food they eat, unlike plants which make their own
  • Describe what happens with too much or too little of a food group (e.g. weak bones without calcium)

1 · Read

Your tummy grumbles when you have not eaten in a while, because your body needs food to keep going. Animals cannot make their own food the way plants do. Instead, animals eat food to get the energy they need to move, grow, and stay healthy.

CarbsProteinsFatsVitaminsMineralsFibreWater
These are the seven main nutrients your body needs from food every day.
Try it together

Mia's lunch has bread, chicken, and an apple. Bread gives her carbohydrates for energy. Chicken gives her protein to help her grow. The apple gives her fibre and vitamins. Toast and pasta give carbohydrates like bread does. Eggs give protein like chicken does, and juice gives vitamins like an apple does. Together, these foods help her body work well.

Eating too much or too little of one nutrient can cause problems. Not getting enough calcium, a mineral found in milk and cheese, can leave your bones weak. Eating a mix of foods with different nutrients every day keeps your body strong.

Animals cannot make their own food, so eating the right mix of foods each day gives the body the energy and nutrients it needs to stay healthy.

The rewritten readings were written for this dataset.

2 · Watch

Take it off screen

Print a worksheetA4 with an answer key page for grown-ups. No screen, no internet.

Where it sits

Where this leads

Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.

Then practise

8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.

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Animal Nutrition · Science, ages 7 to 8 · LightMySky