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1st grade · Science · Unit 5 of 7

Ideas from Nature

Plant and animal parts give us ideas.

What your child practices

Practices how plants and animals use their outside parts to survive, and how people copy those parts to design solutions, like burrs and hook-and-loop straps.

Alaska content standards learning standard: 1-LS1-1 · designing solutions by copying how the shapes of plant and animal parts help them work

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Plants and animals have parts that help them live.
  2. Owls have big eyes to see at night. Quills protect a porcupine.
  3. People copy these parts to make new things.

Example: What do a plant's roots do? Roots grow down into the soil. They take in water. Answer: take in water

Ideas from Nature in Alaska

In the Alaska content standards, this is unit 5 of 7 in 1st grade Science, after Parents & Babies and before Signals Far Away.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Alaska Department of Education and Early Development

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    What does an eagle use to grab food?

    • Sharp claws
    • Soft fur
    • A shell
    • Roots

  2. Question 2

    A turtle hides in its shell. People copied this to make…

    • a pillow
    • a helmet
    • a kite
    • a spoon

  3. Question 3

    A porcupine has quills to…

    • protect itself
    • fly
    • smell flowers
    • swim

  4. Question 4

    People made flippers for swimming by copying…

    • a bird's beak
    • a cat's ears
    • a duck's or frog's feet
    • a cow's tail

  5. Question 5

    A snowshoe hare has big feet to…

    • fly
    • walk on snow
    • swim
    • climb trees

  6. Question 6

    Which plant part could give an idea for a straw?

    • A hollow stem
    • A flower petal
    • A seed
    • A thorn

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