Grade 8 living things and life cycles
What living things need, how they grow and change, and how they fit their habitats. Here is what we have for Grade 8.
Lessons
Cells: The Smallest Living Things
How small is a cell, how does water get in, what's inside, and why are cells so tiny? Four lessons with potatoes, strawberries and gelatin that work with a microscope or without one.
How Plants Make Food: Photosynthesis and Respiration
Where does a tree's mass come from, what happens to the sugar a plant makes, and how does the Sun's energy run a whole ecosystem? Three no-materials lessons with a 400-year-old willow experiment, printed atom cards and a carbon-atom role-play.
Natural Selection: How Living Things Change Over Time
A peppered moth hunting game over four generations, the Grants' real Galápagos finch data from the 1977 drought, whale fossils in rock-layer order with a forelimb bone comparison, and five case stations on selective breeding and antibiotic resistance. Every lesson runs on printed sheets alone: no materials to buy.
Genes and Traits: Heredity and Punnett Squares
Why you look like your family but not exactly, how two purple-flowered pea plants can have a white-flowered one, what Gregor Mendel really counted, and what happens when a gene changes. Four no-materials lessons with printed allele cards, Punnett squares, Mendel's own data and a real gene to decode.
Living things and life cycles in other grades:KindergartenGrade 1Grade 2Grade 3Grade 4Grade 5Grade 6Grade 7All grades