Three Hearts and a Complex Brain
Dear Parents,
All of our budding scientists LOVE animals. Given what I have observed, they think of them mostly as pets, friends, companions, rightly so, in some cases at least! 😀
I have put a challenge for us to accept that the understanding of the animal kingdom goes way beyond having a domesticated animal at home. We will be studying animal life in all its forms of complexity, from the simplest, bacteria to the most complex, humans.
Animal design.
Today’s session began with an exploration of the word design. We used Mattia’s dress to describe what a design is. As soon as everyone agreed they comprehended the basic meaning behind it, we moved on to think of design in nature. Your girls had all sorts of great ideas, examples. On the side, they have also discovered that some animals live in symbiosis, your girls have portrayed it artistically in their drawings (see below) !
Next, we have deepened our study of molluscs that we started last week! Today your kids have learned big words such as:
- gastropods, from Greek — gastro, meaning stomach and pod meaning foot
- bivalves
- cephalopods, from Greek — cepha meaning head and pod meaning foot
Enjoy the video we watched together to help us comprehend this fascinating category of species.
Today we are going to learn about a very soft invertebrate animal, molluscs. There are many different types of molluscs and all are very different. Some are really small measuring only a few centimeters, such as clams, and others are enormous and can measure up to 20 meters, like this giant squid which is larger than a truck!
The beautiful mollusc.
We ended our session with the exploration of an octopus' real body which happens to be one of the most complex molluscs! Your girls have learned that an octopus has different sized suction cups as the bottom of the sea challenges it to adapt to different strength of suction motion! They have learned that it has 3 hearts and a complex brain that has a central brain and 8 branches attached to each arm!