📝 4th Grade Human & Animal Resource

🦬 Isn't it curious how some animals share physical features, even when they seem completely unrelated?

I received this very cool article called Horns, Hooves, Spots, and Stripes: Form and Pattern in Nature many years ago when I was preparing to teach 4th grade for the first time. It was written for Orion Nature Quarterly by Mark Riegner, who apparently used to teach a whole course on Form and Pattern in Nature at Prescott College.

Riegner’s work is inspired by Goethe and considers the classification system developed by Carl Linnaeus. (Side note: I taught my students Linnaeus’ system once in fifth grade, and it flopped big time. I think it’s fascinating, but somehow that didn’t come through. Guess they just want to love animals still at that age.)

Here are a few quotes to pique your curiosity, but the whole article is worth a read.