GoalRemember how to compare animals, how animals and people grow, and what we inherit from our parents.
New words
insect · an animal with six legsinherit · to get a characteristic from your parentsfingerprint · the pattern of tiny lines on a fingertip
Explanation
Let us remember how we compare animals. We look at how many legs they have, what covers their body, and where they live. An insect has six legs. A spider has eight. We can show the results of counting in a block graph. All animals grow and change. A young animal gets bigger, but it keeps the same number of legs. People grow from babies into children and adults. We inherit some characteristics from our parents, such as hair or eye colour. Our fingerprints are our own. Nobody else has the same ones, not even an identical twin.
Worked examples
Ana counted animals on a wall: 2 birds, 4 beetles and 1 spider. Beetles have 6 legs, so the 6-legs bar is the tallest.
A duckling grows into a duck. It gets bigger and grows proper feathers, but it still has two legs and a beak.
Omar has freckles like his mum. He inherited them. His fingerprints, though, are his own. Nobody else has the same ones.
Class activity
Animal quiz (with an adult): take turns being the quizmaster. Choose an animal, for example a spider, a cat, a hen or a snake. The other person asks questions such as “How many legs?” and “Is it an insect?” until they can guess. Then say how a baby of that animal looks different from the adult.
Practice
1
How many legs does an insect have?
Six.
2
Sort these animals by number of legs: 0 legs, 2 legs, 4 legs.
A snake, 0 legs; B dog, 4 legs; C duck, 2 legs.
3
A baby goat was 2 hand spans tall at 1 month, 4 at 2 months and 6 at 3 months. If it grows in the same way, how tall will it be at 4 months?
8 hand spans. It grows 2 hand spans every month.
4
Tell one way that children can be different from their brothers and sisters.
For example: hair, eye colour, height, the shape of the nose or fingerprints.
