Nature Example
Identifying and Classifying
Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Click here for the license
Classifying just means sorting things into groups. Scientists love sorting! It helps us understand how things are connected.
You can sort things by...
- Their properties: E.g., splitting your toys into 'hard' and 'soft' groups.
- What they are: E.g., sorting animals into 'birds', 'mammals', and 'insects'.
- If they are alive: E.g., sorting things into 'living' (a plant), 'dead' (a fallen leaf), or 'never alive' (a stone).
💡 Fun Facts
- Sorting animals by what they eat gives us special science names: 'carnivores' (meat-eaters like a fox) and 'herbivores' (plant-eaters like a rabbit).
- You can sort all the leaves you find into 'green' and 'not green', or 'spiky' and 'smooth'.
- Scientists even classify clouds! They have names like 'cumulus' (the fluffy ones) and 'stratus' (the streaky ones).