Plants Get Hungry, Too!Lower_Level_01
I feel hungry. It must be time for lunch. I’ve been playing outside for two hours. Lucky for me, I’m right across the street from my house. Mom must have seen me coming. She has a sandwich ready for me when I step inside. As I eat, I look at the plant on the windowsill. Mom waters it every single day. It has grown so tall. It even bloomed a few flowers. I realize she’s never given the plant a sandwich! What makes it grow? Plants have a special way to eat. When Mom made my sandwich, she had to use food out of the refrigerator.

I ask my mother if plants ever feel hungry. She says that plants make their own food using sunlight. I feel sorry for the plant. This sandwich is yummy. But Mom laughs at me. She says plants are called producers. They get this name since they produce, or make, their own food.
She says that plants absorb, or take in, the parts they need to make food. They need air, water, and sunlight. All these parts combine together inside the plant to make a kind of sugar. I don’t feel so sorry for the plant now. It lives on sugar! I wish I could. Plants sure are cool! No other living thing is able to do what they can do.

Plants have lots of parts. Each part has a job. Just like the parts in your body. Plant leaves are where food is made. Leaves take in sunlight and gases from the air. They use a process called photosynthesis. Photosynthesis turns those gases, water, and sunlight into the sugar that a plant consumes.