GingerPoppy Posted May 1, 2012 Share Posted May 1, 2012 I'd like to do a science unit on the classification of living things with my dd10. Any ideas for fun activities or projects to either introduce it or help learn the concepts? And super websites, books, or games? Thanks in advance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
West Coast Mom Posted May 1, 2012 Share Posted May 1, 2012 In the Hands of a Child has lapbooks and project packs on the classification of living things. We did one of them last year and the kids enjoyed it. My boys were 8 and 10 at the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalmia Posted May 1, 2012 Share Posted May 1, 2012 I used to do this activity with kids at the zoo. Get a small box and fill it with plastic replicas of the classes and phyla you are teaching (e.g. mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, bony fish, cartilaginous fish, jawless fish, sponges (you can use a natural sponge for this), jellyfish, worms, insects, spiders, crabs, sand dollars, sea stars, etc.) Address the box to "Your School Name" Museum and include a letter inside from the "National Museum" to your "Curators" (your children) explaining that they have sent representatives of the animal kingdom for you to exhibit in the taxonomically correct wings of your brand new museum. (Many museums organize specimens taxonomically). Then have the children take a large piece of poster paper and draw a plan (looking down like a map) of their museum with enough "rooms" for all the classes and phyla you have covered. Have them label the rooms (e.g. Hall of Mammals. Or Arthropod Wing with Halls for Insecta, Myriapoda etc.) Once they have designed their museum, "deliver" the specimens and have them sort them into the correct halls. If you don't want to shell out the cash for the plastic animals (which can be used as toys later) just use cut-out photos of the animals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AuntieM Posted May 1, 2012 Share Posted May 1, 2012 You can take a bunch of small household items, 12-20 things. Choose some that you notice have similarities and differences - like a blue crayon and a blue Lego brick. A pencil and a pen. Ask her to make four groups with the items, she gets to determine how they should be grouped - its not random grouping, she needs to decide which items can be grouped together. Let her know that that some items may be harder to place in a group but that she still should try to get them all into four groups. There does not have to be an equal number of items in each group. Once she does this, there's a lot to talk about! What are the characteristics of each group? How did she decide to place certain items into the chosen group? Did she do it based on appearance? Function? If you asked her to rearrange things, what other ways could groups be assembled? Was it easy? Was there a platypus (ie, hard to place "exceptions")? Then give her a few more items. Tell her she can now make 5 groups. Repeat the above dialogue. This activity is especially fun done with more than one student. They each get the exact same group of objects and I promise you they will come up with different classification methods. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AuntieM Posted May 1, 2012 Share Posted May 1, 2012 Kalmia, how funny! Mine was also a zoo lesson plan! I would do something like your activity following the one I described. I have a gazillion of those plastic critters! Beanie babies work well, too, OP, if you have those. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arghmatey Posted May 1, 2012 Share Posted May 1, 2012 You can take a bunch of small household items, 12-20 things. Choose some that you notice have similarities and differences - like a blue crayon and a blue Lego brick. A pencil and a pen. Ask her to make four groups with the items, she gets to determine how they should be grouped - its not random grouping, she needs to decide which items can be grouped together. Let her know that that some items may be harder to place in a group but that she still should try to get them all into four groups. There does not have to be an equal number of items in each group. Once she does this, there's a lot to talk about! What are the characteristics of each group? How did she decide to place certain items into the chosen group? Did she do it based on appearance? Function? If you asked her to rearrange things, what other ways could groups be assembled? Was it easy? Was there a platypus (ie, hard to place "exceptions")? Then give her a few more items. Tell her she can now make 5 groups. Repeat the above dialogue. This activity is especially fun done with more than one student. They each get the exact same group of objects and I promise you they will come up with different classification methods. My girls like this activity, and we also used a classification exercise to organize the playroom. We put all the toys on the floor in a pile and organized them into categories. Then I made labels and let the girls decide here ech category would go (into this drawer, into that basket, on this shelf). I affixed the labels using Velcro dots, and they used the labels to put the toys in their places. We repeat the exercise a few times a week and move the labels as desired. A third classification exercise we perform is food groups. We cut out pictures from magazines and categorize them into groups, and then we make a good notebook with details for each food. These were all helpful in understanding why we classify things, and then you can apply it and shift to anything that has classifications. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MomatHWTK Posted May 1, 2012 Share Posted May 1, 2012 http://www.macmillanmh.com/science/2008/student/na/grade5/index.html http://msnucleus.org/membership/k-6.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dirty ethel rackham Posted May 1, 2012 Share Posted May 1, 2012 Here is a website I used when we did this for our science club. Also, I set up an interesting activity to start with. I filled a laundry basket with various items from around the house ... stuffed animals, school supplies, miscellaneous junk we had lying around. I had the kids sort things. I didn't tell them how to do so ... they had to determine the rules themselves. Then, I had them explain how they sorted them. I think that time, they did it by function - toy, tool, decoration. Then they put them all back in the box and I had them do it again with different classification criteria. I don't remember what they came up with but it was pretty creative. It came up that there were some disagreements as to how to sort. I related this to taxonomy of living things. At one time they used one criteria, but as scientists learned more, the criteria changed and is still changing. We then segued into the current classification system. This was the beginning of our year-long life sciences unit, which we organized by taxonomy. We had the kids make a poster of taxonomy. After each club meeting, we put each animal group where it belonged on our poster. It made for a great unifying theme. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GingerPoppy Posted May 2, 2012 Author Share Posted May 2, 2012 Thanks for the great ideas! I knew I'd find inspiration here. I will be trying most of this! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dmmetler Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 I had my DD classify Neopets trading cards :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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