Classifying by Kingdoms, an Essay by Mrs. Bailey's Class

This week we finished our second whole class essay. We decided to connect our Science curriculum with our writing. What do you notice about the essay format?
What did you find interesting about classifying living things? Do you know any additional information about this topic? We'd love to learn more!



Classifying living things into kingdoms

Do you want to learn about classifying living things into kingdoms? You do not have to be a scientist to classify. You have to observe the different characteristics. After we observe the characteristics, you place them into one of the three following kingdoms: animal kingdom, fungi kingdom, or plant kingdom.
Animal kingdom is one way we can classify living things into a kingdom. One way to to classify animals is if they have a backbone or not. Foe example, a wolf has a backbone, and a slug does not have a backbone. Some animals are warm blooded and some animals are cold blooded. For example a dog is warm blooded, and snakes are cold blooded. Those are examples of ways to classify the animal kingdom.
The next kingdom we can classify using characteristics is the fungi kingdom. Fungus is a decomposer. A decomposer feeds on rotting things. Fungus grows best in the dark. We learned this from growing our own mold in the classroom. We can also eat certain kinds of fungus. For example, we can eat mushrooms, which are fungus. Fungi can travel as spores and can attach to the rotting material.
Our last kingdom to classify is the plant kingdom. We can classify plants by their roots. For example a carrot has a taproot and a flower has a fibrous root. We can also classify plants by their leaves. Leaves can be classified by size, color, shape, and texture.
As you can see there are many ways to classify living things into kingdoms. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to classify them. Classifying living things helps scientists organize the kingdoms!

Mold!

Mold Observations from our teams:

Team 2~

- Mold takes a long time to form

-Mold can be any color

-Mold has spores

Team 3~

- The mold looks like powder spread

- It's black and dark green

-We can each mold (mushrooms)

Team 4~

-Mold feeds off of dead plants to get nutrients

-Mold spores need to grow in the dark

Team 5~

-Mold on the bread is hard

-The mold fed off of the bread and water

Team 6~

-Mold grows in the dark unlike flowers

-Mold is a decomposer

-Mold can be different colors

-Spores fly in the air

-Mold eats rotten things

Leaf Characteristics Sort

Leaves! Leaves! Leaves! Last week we did a science experiment with leaves. Do you know why? We wanted to sort them by their characteristics. Characteristics are the texture, color, shape, size, and smell...or anything else you observe. Some leaves smell good, some didn't. Smell is one of the characteristics of leaves. My favorite characteristic was texture because I love how the leaves felt. Some were rough, some were smooth, and some felt sticky.

Keep scrolling down to see how the rest of the class sorted their leaves!

Article By: Number 8

Number 17 and 11 sorted their leaves by size, color and texture. "One leaf was fuzzy. It felt kind of weird," said #17.


Number 15 and number 25 sorted their leaves by the size, shape and color. "One smelled like pizza," said number 15. "It did," number 25 agreed!

Number 23, 18, and 20 measured their leaves in order to sort them by size.

Number 23 said, "One of the leaves was a mint leaf. It smelled so good. I just wanted to eat it!"

"The texture was really bumpy on the older one, and the new ones were really smooth," said number 18.

" When I saw one of the leaves, it looked like a four-leaf clover. I made a wish, but it wasn't a four-leaf clover," said Number 20.