Saturday, March 17, 2012

Is everything either a mammal, reptile, bird or dinosaur?

I worked with a group today who had been interested in mammals and reptiles and who in a previous discussion had identified  characteristics that would allow us to identify, mammals, dinosaurs, reptiles and birds. I provided the children with a pictures of creatures and asked them to sort them into a category. They soon realised that some just didn’t fit into the five categories that they had already identified. The added 4 further categories which were, bugs, insects, fish, amphibians and spiders.


Miss B: what is the difference between a bug and an insect?

Ashtyn: Insects are something small and sometimes helps plants, bugs fly insects don’t.l

Alicya: Insects have little legs.

Quinn: some insects fly, bugs are skinny and fly. Bugs are skinny.

Molly: bugs have little legs and insects have long legs. Fish have to have fins and scales.

Alicya: They swim, a whale is not a fish, it said in a poem.

Quinn: Fish go underwater.

Keira: Bugs have no hair on them and insects have hair on them.

Jewels: Spiders have more legs that’s why they are different.

Alicya: But a butterfly has lots of legs too!

Keira: Spiders have 8.

Jewels: They have more eyes, they have the same number of legs and eyes.

Ashtyn: I think a whale is a fish.

Jewels: A whale is a mammal, its not a fish because it is too big.


At this point I stopped the children and they blue tacked the pictures into the catergories they thought would best fit. We are going to put them on the wall and look at them for a few days and then review our thoughts. When they are happy with the categories we will try and identify their characteristics.

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