Classifying Animals

Right now in Science, with Ms Elder, we are learning about Animals. On the first day, we got a picture of a mashed-up animal. With our group, we had to give it a name, say where it lived, how it protects itself, and what it eats. Instead of just guessing, we had to use clues from the photo of the animal's features to distinguish those answers. This drew our attention to details about animals like their colours, claws, teeth, and other body parts. 

We learned that recently there has been a real-life animal mash-up: a hybrid bird species known as a "grue jay" which is part blue jay and part green jay. Scientists think it's the first hybrid vertebrate to travel outside its range because of climate change. 

We learned that animals are named after their habitat (ex: the mountain goat), structure (ex: swordfish), or appearance (ex: blue jay).

Today, Ms Elder gave us a sheet with lots of animals on it and asked us to classify them. We could choose how many categories we used and what they are. Here are some student examples:

I sorted my animals into two groups: predator or prey

I sorted my animals into two groups: 
things I find attractive and unattractive

I sorted mine into 6 groups: reptiles, underwater animals, amphibians,
insects, birds, and mammals

I sorted mine into: big, medium, small

After, we learned about the Animal Kingdom classification system that scientists use and learned the vocabulary words: mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, arthropods.