Activity: Identifying animal geometric patterns

 INTRODUCTION TO THE TOPIC

As we already know, animals have different patterns in their fur and skin, these patterns make them unique and also give them the possibility to hide in the nature while blending in with the environment, show a warning to their enemyes of find a partner. From the dots in a leopard, to the stripes in a zebra, even the scales of a fish, it all has a meaning and a purpose which in essential in wild life for these animals. In some cases those patterns contain geometric figures like triangles or rhombus which can help us show children how geometry is everywhere, that animals also use it and how it can help them.

By doing so we can increase the interest in this topic and let them see that it is usual in our everyday life as to give it a purpose and a reason to study it.

REAL EXAMPLES

As mentioned before, there are plenty of animals that use different patterns in their skin to achieve different activities like hiding and blemding in with the environment. But we need to include some visual input so students can truly undersand our point and see them.

Here we have some examples that can help us achieve that. the fisrt one shows a jiraffe fur in which we have highlighted the geometric figures that we have been able to find in its fur so that its identification is as easy as possible, the initial idea can begin by showing the fur only, without any signaling so that the students themselves are the ones who identify the geometric figures that are visible. 

In the snake example we can do exactly the same procedure, depending on the level we can try to calculate the area and perimeter with a given scale.

ADAPTATION

This adaptation give us the opportunity to use the same resources in different levels only by introducing some modifications that allow us to make it more easy or difficult while making it affordable for every class. 

Once again this exercise can raise up the interest on this topic and we can also ask students to bring their own examples of patterns found on animals and ashow them in class which includes a basic investigation that they have to perform on their on in order to find a pattern that suit their need and that can also be used as an example

EXAMPLE VIDEOS