How Plants Make Their Food
- Biology
- Ages 8–11 · Grades 3–5
What you’ll find out
- Plants make sugar from water and carbon dioxide using energy from sunlight: photosynthesis.
- Most of a plant’s material comes from the air, not the soil.
- Photosynthesis releases oxygen, and the energy in almost all food began as sunlight.
No sign-up and no real names. In the lesson you check your understanding as you read, and practise until it sticks.
Food from air, water and light
Plants do not eat food the way animals do; they make their own. A plant takes in water through its roots and a gas called carbon dioxide from the air through tiny holes in its leaves. The green parts of the leaves catch sunlight, and the plant uses that energy to turn water and carbon dioxide into sugar. This sugar is the plant’s food. The whole process is called photosynthesis.
Oxygen and energy for everyone
As plants make their food, they give off a gas called oxygen, which goes out through their leaves into the air. Animals and people need oxygen to breathe, so plants keep us alive. The sugar that plants make also feeds animals: a cow eats grass, and people eat plants or animals that ate plants. So the energy in almost all our food first came from the Sun.
Curriculum links: NGSS 5-LS1-1 · NGSS 5-PS3-1 · England KS2: Plants · Cambridge Primary Stages 4–6: Biology · NCERT Environmental Studies, Classes 3–5