Classify!

How can we sort these marbles? By shape? Nope, they are all spheres.

By size? Sure, there are a few big ones and a lot of small ones.

By color? Yup, we've got light blue swirls and black with speckles.

Let's classify them by color.

The light blue swirls go over here, no matter what size they are. The black with speckles go here, big and small.

Can we classify them further?

Sure! Let's separate the black speckled ones into smaller groups, classified by the color of the speckles. (It's hard to see, but there are blue, green, yellow, red and gray speckles.)

Can we classify them even more?

Yup! Here are two marbles with red speckles, but look--one is mostly black and one is mostly red.

This activity was part of our science unit study--we're learning about how and why scientists classify things. Today we read about the Linnaean Classification System and talked about why Latin is a good universal language for scientists.

In our Marble Kingdom, there are two Phyla: Blue Swirl and Black Speckle. The black-with-mostly-red, and the red-with-mostly-black are different Species in the same Genus.

More on our science unit study later...Hope you're having a great week!