Tyler and Krista, four year-old twins, often visit their local grocery store with their mother. They know just where to go to find their favorite cereal. Why? Because the food is organized in the store. Cereals are together on one aisle. But there is even more organization that that. Notice that Krista chose a cereal made by Kellogg’s and Tyler has a General Foods cereal. Next the types of cereal are different, Krista likes Frosted Flakes and Tyler’s choice is Honey Nut Cheerios. So, not only are all cereals grouped together, but then the cereals are divided into Brands, which are divided into types.
Since there are so many different kinds of food, it is necessary for stores to organize them. Likewise, because there are so many different kinds of living things, learning about them could also be a problem if they are not organized. The organization of food, organisms or anything is a type of classification.
Tyler and Krista are not old enough to understand taxonomy, which is the branch of biology concerned with the classification and naming of organisms. But their parents and teachers are preparing the foundation needed to understand this more advanced type of classification. How is this being done? By teaching them to group similar things, such as shoes, colors, animals, etc…
Try This!
A fun activity for young learners at home is to put two pairs of shoes from each family member in a basket. Write the name of each family member on a piece of paper. Place the papers on the floor to mark where the shoes belonging to the name on the paper will be placed. Taking turns, each child takes out one shoe at a time. The child first identifies the name of the owner of the shoe. Then the child find the owner’s name on the paper and put the shoe with the name. This continues until all the shoes are out of the basket and grouped. For the twins, they would have four groups–Dad, Mom, Tyler, and Krista.
For Older Learners
I have done this with an adult class and even they moaned and made groans about sticky feet– All in fun of course. So expect this reaction.
Have each class member to put one of their shoes on the floor in a central location. You want all the kids to be able to see what is happening.
Start out by briefly discussing physical properties, which include what things look like. For example, the physical properties of the red shoes shown on this page include: lady’s shoe, red, size 6, open toe, no back and block heel (measure the height and list it), right shoe.
1. First the shoes are to be divided into two piles so that the shoes in each pile have at least one characteristic that the shoes in the other pile do not have. For example:
With Strings Without Strings
2. Divide the shoes in each group into two groups, such as girls shoes and boys shoes.
Continue to divide each group until every shoe is in a group all by itself.
For information about the history of classification, see TAXONOMY
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