Animal Magic

Background
Asking questions and answering them on the basis of observations is the foundation of all science. Children need to learn to ask good questions which are clear and can be answered effectively. They must also learn to classify in ways which become increasingly systematic. Most three year olds are able to recognise a dog and tell the difference between it and a cat although it may be several years before they are able to explain how they know the difference. The Animal Magic activity begins to build up skills of questioning and classification.

Teaching Suggestions
The game begins by introducing the animals using short animations. This can be used with a group of children to ensure that everyone can recognise and read the name of each animal. The first task is to sort the animals by answering yes or no to a series of five questions and placing the animals in the appropriate set. Incorrectly placed animals will jump back and can be then put in the correct box. The animations at the start of the game demonstrate the features on which subsequent questions are based. For example the bear is seen climbing a tree and one of the questions is 'Does it climb trees?'

After the general introduction children can work in pairs on the activity. The youngest may need help with mouse control.

The second part of the activity involves the Wise Wizard making an identification on the basis of three questions only. Children can play this game as many times as they wish and the youngest will be amazed that the wizard can always work out the chosen animal. The purpose of requiring a drawing/name on paper at the beginning is to prevent the child forgetting (or changing his/her mind!) in the middle of the process.

Follow-up activities using the printable resources
All the animal pictures are available as printable resources which could be used for manual sorting activities. You could work with children discussing different questions to use as sort criteria eg Does it have legs? Does it have wings? Can it swim? With older children it is useful to explore why some questions may be better than others. For example, the presence of legs can be easily seen but wings may be folded away and how can we tell whether or not a fox can swim?

The final printable resource - How to be a wise wizard - helps to develop understanding of how the branching tree structure works. This activity should only be used after children have used the SPARK Wise Wizard activities and is probably only appropriate for more able children. A simplified version with just four animals is provided which allows each to be identified with just two questions. It is represented as a table on the sheet but it might be helpful to show it on paper as a branching structure with two choice points (see Fig 1). Children can try this on their friends as suggested.

Fig 1:

The second activity on the sheet involves formulating questions which can be answered YES or NO and sequencing and structuring these to build a new branching database. These two steps are considerably more difficult as children must think carefully about distinguishing features and how to formulate questions. Careful teaching and support is necessary to help children understand this.

Children beginning this work are unlikely to produce nicely symmetrical trees like that shown above. The first question in the given example separates the group of 4 animals into two sets of two. If the question had cut the group into a three and a one, then a third question would be needed to complete the separation (see Fig 2). A place has been left for this in the blank table.

Fig 2:

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