Punnett Squares

With a careful eye on a well-balanced curriculum, we choose our themes and projects thoughtfully. Our first long-range theme of "Identity" is no different. It is rich with opportunities for all sorts of different explorations, including scientific. We will examine our fingerprints, for instance, to try to identity what type we have and to compare them with our friends.

In science class with Shan, children have been learning about genes, traits, and - most recently - Mendel's experiments with peas and Punnett Squares.

Using yellow and green pompoms to represent parents with purebred traits, we looked at an example what their offspring would look like:

If yellow pompoms represent a dominant gene and green pompoms represent a recessive gene, the yellow shows up first. In other words, when a purebred pea plant with yellow seeds is crossed with a purebred pea plant with green seeds, there is a 100% probability that the offspring with have yellow seeds. 

After some other examples and practice, partners got busy building their own Punnet Squares.