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Natural Selection Activity for Kids
Natural Selection Model DIY
- Duration: 20 min
- Difficulty: Easy
- Cost: $0 to $5
Learn how to model natural selection!
Material List
- 1Stopwatch
- 1Green piece of paper
- 1Pair of sunglasses
- 1Piece of bubble wrap
- 1Pair of tongs
- 1Variety of colorful items, like paperclips
Instructions
- 1Scatter the colorful items on the green paper.
- 2Fold the bubble wrap around the sunglasses and put them on.
- 3Start your stopwatch timer and collect as many colorful pieces with the tongs as you can see, one at a time.
- 4Stop after 20 seconds.
- 5Observe which colors you collected and which ones you missed.
- 6Try it with a different color of paper.
How It Works
Most of the green paper clips remained because they have a trait that helped them survive in the environment. Geen paper clips are harder to notice on green paper so they got picked up less often. If you did this with yellow paper, most of the yellow clips would be left. That is natural selection at work! Over many generations, it can cause major changes in living things.
Check out the Full Lesson on Natural Selection
In this lesson, we learn that:
- Living things have variations in their traits that are determined by their genes.
- Some traits can give them an advantage in surviving and finding mates.
- The process of natural selection causes living things to change over generations.
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