Classification - the fun way!

Sweet-Pea is learning all about Taxonomy in Botany. She's learning how to classify flowers through this process. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about...plants can be broken down like this:

Kingdom --> Phylum --> Class --> Order --> Family --> Genus --> Species

Does any of that ring a bell from your school days?!? It should!

Anyhow, we decided to use shoes to learn about classifying - the simple way. What better way is there for a girl to learn science than with shoes?!? Sweet-Pea gathered 15 shoes from my closet and once I got her to stop trying on all my shoes, we got our school work done! hee hee



Here's the result of our study...

KINGDOM: SHOE


She broke them down into 4 different phylums...

PHYLA: Daily Shoes, Slippers, Flip Flops, Sunday Shoes


She then broke those 4 phylums into various classes...

CLASS:
Daily Shoes -->White and Brown


Slippers -->Girls and Boys


Flip Flops -->Blue and Black


Sunday Shoes -->Dark and Light


ORDER:
Daily Shoes -->White and Brown --> White boys/white girls/brown 1 strap/brown multi strap


Slippers -->Girls and Boys -->blue and pink


Flip Flops -->Blue and Black -->Blue boys/blue girls/black girls


Sunday Shoes -->Dark and Light -->Dark boys/dark girls/light closed/light open


So there you have it! Science made simple!! Smelly...but simple! =)

Now...if I can get her to remember what binomial nomenclature is by the end of the week, we'll be all set. It sounds like a big word, but it's actually the formal way they name species...in Latin. They take the name of the genus and the species and put them together to form the Latin name for each plant. It's pretty cool. Capitalize the Genus and put them both in italics and you're good to go. Next time you go to the local nursery for some plants, why not ask for them in their Latin botanical names and impress the salesman! Here are a few:

Acer rubrum...Red Maple
Papaver rhoeas...Common Poppy
Acer saccharinum...Silver Maple
Cornus florida...Flowering Dogwood
Centaurea cyanus ...Cornflower