Category: Unit 2

This section is about reproduction and is intended for older students. Please preview the material before presenting to your children. Remember, you are in charge of your children’s education and are totally empowered to skip over any material that you deem unsuitable. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s… Continue reading The Endocrine and Reproductive Systems

Five little puppies dug a hole under the fence and went for a walk in the wide, wide world. The Poky Little Puppy, Janette Lowrey My family is going to get a new puppy soon – a wiggly bundle of Goldendoodle fuzz that will turn our home into joyous chaos for years to come. Before… Continue reading The Puppy (and Human) Life Cycle

There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues… are created, strengthened and maintained. Winston Churchill As we have seen, different types of animals have various types of eggs, early lives, and ways of growing up. One important difference between mammals (including humans) and many non-mammals… Continue reading When in Florida, Do as the Flamingos Do? – Types of Animal Families

Why did the chicken cross the road? -To get to the other side. As we move to the Kingdom of Animals, we will see that there are two main types of life cycles: animals that hatch from eggs and animals that are born live. As we saw on our first tour of the Kingdoms, many… Continue reading Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? – The Life Cycle of Egg-Laying Creatures

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. Genesis 1: 3, 5, KJV Flowering plants move through their life cycle smoothly, from seed to plant to flower to seed, but there are other plants (as well as mushrooms) who have… Continue reading Morning and Night – The Alternation of Generations

Mighty oaks from little acorns grow. Traditional adage When we visit the Kingdom of Plants, one of the most glorious things to see are the flowers: sweet violets strewn on the ground, enormous white magnolia blossoms decking trees; even lovely yellow prickly pear cactus flowers adorn the desert. Each season brings new color, with the… Continue reading From a Flower to a Seed – How Plants Reproduce

The weak often revenge themselves on those who use them ill, even though they be the more powerful. The Eagle and the Beetle, Aesop Let us consider once again the humble sponge – those (sometimes quite large) plant-like animals of the ocean. Unlike most other creatures, sponges can reproduce both sexually (where an egg and… Continue reading If You Try to Squash a Sponge…A Tale of Asexual Reproduction