Introducing the 6 Kingdoms of Life

Months ago, after watching an episode of Brainchild on Netflix, the boys got super interested with knowing more about bacteria.  They have so many questions about the biodiversity of life such as, if  a bacteria is an animal or a plant? is it an alien species? The curiosity  and eagerness to learn led me to introduce the Six Kingdoms of Life.


I know, this is elementary work, but I managed to pull-out activities that worked perfectly for both boys (10 and 5 years old).

THE TREE OF LIFE

To start with, I created a diagram of the six kingdoms and this was inspired by the book that we read.  You see, the book is outdated though... so I have to explain why this happened (only 5 kingdoms were discussed).


Vito volunteered to recreate the tree of life and totally enjoyed it.  We kept discussing about each kingdom as he placed each circular picture on the branches of the tree.




The images I used were all high quality, clear, simple, and can easily be identified.  This made it easier for Vito to work on and kept his interest for a long period.

KINGDOMS OF LIFE BOOKS AND RESOURCES

Once we were done with our tree, the three of us sat down and discussed each kingdom.  Of course, the boys were pretty much familiar with plants and animals, but they know very little about fungi, protists, archaeabacteria, and eubacteria.  Actually the the boys were much more interested about the microscopic life and that's what we focused on in this study.

If you are following me on Instagram, you should have seen part of the discussion in our stories.  I used this beautiful book The Animal Book: A Visual Encyclopedia of Life on Earth, which focused on the animal kingdom but has introductory material on bacteria and plants. 

I love that it has beautiful pictures of microscopic images of different bacteria which was the main topic of our discussion.  We talked about how bacteria can be good and how others can be deadly.

These books are good and are perfect for elementary kids! Though the books are more on text, but they contain beautiful photographs of microcospic images of bacteria and are very informative as well.  Mavi enjoyed these books more!

Books we used are:

• Archaea: Salt-Lovers, Methane-Makers, Thermophiles, and Other Archaeans (Class of Their Own)
• Bacteria: Staph, Strep, Clostridium, and Other Bacteria (Class of Their Own)
• Protists: Algae, Amoebas, Plankton, and Other Protists (Class of Their Own)
• Animals: Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Amphibians, Fish, and Other Animals (Class of Their Own)
• Plants: Flowering Plants, Ferns, Mosses, and Other Plants (Class of Their Own)
• Fungi: Mushrooms, Toadstools, Molds, Yeasts, and Other Fungi (Class of Their Own)

KINGDOMS OF LIFE 3 PART CARDS and 3 LESSON PERIOD

Once we are done with the books, we worked again on the 3 part cards.  This is just a simple activity for Vito to work on, as a followup on our tree of life.  This is a good way for little ones to memorize the 6 kingdoms too!

KINGDOMS OF LIFE SORTING CARDS

Included in our learning pack are the sorting cards for kids so they can easily identify and differentiate animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, archaebacteria and protista.  This is a great way to practise differentiating so they can easily grasp the concept, perfect for retention!

More will be added in the learning pack! You can get this learning material from our shop by clicking here or the picture below.


More learning materials at Pinay Homeschooler Shop.

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