In science class with Shan on Wednesday, we had an age-appropriate introduction to genetics. This is part of our months-long identity project, and will lead to other investigations about ourselves. Shan started by giving science partners pictures of parents and offspring and challenged students to find as many similarities and differences as they could. Dogs, horses, flowering plants, and trees were all studied. The main idea was that offspring are very much like their parents, but not exactly alike. They also grow into the same thing as their parent - a puppy will always grow into a dog, for instance. Genes give us the blueprint of what we will look like.
Students were then given instructions on how to build an alien or alien bug (most chose an alien). Coin flips determined the traits the aliens had. In the examples below, "Bob" and "Spotty" have two very different types of ears as Spotty had the recessive bb genes, while Bob had either the BB or Bb gene pair.
More exciting things are afoot in the next weeks and months in the science lab! Stay tuned for our upcoming "tree of genetic traits".
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