DIchotomous Keying

Almost there... a few more questions.

     In order to understand how to use a dichotomous key for our tree project we used this concepts with seeds today.  The children were asked to come up with a yes or no question to start classifying their seeds.  Our first question was is this seed brownish red or not?  That broke the seeds into 2 groups.  From there we broke the brownish red group into 2 more groups.
     Once we were done with the brownish red seeds we moved on to the seeds that were left.  I am extremely excited about how well the kids did with coming up with their yes or no questions and breaking their seed groups down to a group of one kind of seed that could then be looked up and identified by its physical characteristic.  It was clearly one of those "AHAH" moments.

Now it will be fun to see them do this with their tree study starting next week.  Is this a coniferous tree?  yes or no?  Is it an opposite branching tree?  yes or no?  until their mystery tree is identified.  FUN, FUN, FUN.