(cheerful music) - Welcome to Room 9 Summertime, our nation's largest classroom.

My name is Ms. Turnage, and I am a teacher in the Ritenour School District in the St. Louis region.

Today's lesson is a science lesson for first grade learners, but all learners are welcome to join us.

I'm so excited that you're here with us today.

Today, we are going to be talking about pets.

Many times when we see animals, they are big and fully grown, like my dog, Maestro, or my cat, London.

They are both adult animals, but all animals, including those animals we call humans, start off as babies.

Did you know that already?

I wonder if you already knew that animals start off as babies and then grow up to be adults.

Let's explore this topic just a little bit more, pets, today.

Come on.

I reached out to some of my friends in my neighborhood to see what kinds of animal parents and animal babies live in their homes with them.

Some of my friends are really awesome humans, and they have rescued animals who really didn't have a place to go, or anyone to take care of them, and make sure they were okay.

I found so many different types of animals.

Let's take a look together at what I found.

Some animals you might find are wild, like this robin.

One friend sent me a picture of this robin, and if you look really closely, you can see that the robin has made a nest, and there are a few hungry babies that are totally ready for some lunch.

Another friend shared a photo of her Chihuahua, Mona.

Mona is a dog.

She's a rescue dog.

She's really a sweet girl.

This is Holly.

In this picture, she's just a fuzzy little puppy relaxing on her bed.

You might already know this, but when dogs are babies, we call them puppies.

Here's Noela.

She's a sweet, sweet cat.

She's known as a tuxedo cat, because she's black and white.

It's fancy all the time.

She just loves watching birds out the window.

Hi, kitty.

Pretty kitty.

These kittens are some new little lives in the world around us.

Their mama is still taking care of them, and feeding them every single day.

They're still babies, and they're really too little to take care of themselves all by themselves.

I was totally having a blast with birds, cats, and dogs, and then things got really interesting.

Check out this gerbil.

His name is Loki.

He looks like he wants to say hello.

Hi, Loki.

And look at these lovely creatures.

This mother duck and her babies look like they're just about ready for a swim.

Another friend sent a photo of a cute and snuggly bunny.

It's actually a baby bunny.

It's still kind of small.

And you can see that its fur is kind of fluffy still.

Cute, snuggly bunny we have here.

So sweet.

Take a look at these baby birds that a friend sent to me.

Their parents made a nest in a window.

So my friend got to see the birds as they hatch and grow.

In this photo, they are just four weeks old.

And a friend who has a farm sent me this picture of baby chickens, called chicks, and baby ducks, which are called ducklings.

I guess when you have a farm, all kinds of animals can live with you.

My friend with the farm has a pot-bellied pig.

Can you see the pig in this picture here?

Wow.

That pig is actually an adult.

My friend with the farm also has an African tortoise named Tammy.

Tammy the tortoise, you're not going to believe this one.

Tammy weighs 130 pounds.

Whoa!

That is one heavy tortoise.

While I was looking at all the animals my friends shared with me, I noticed something, Some of the animals were adult animals, and some were baby animals.

I started wondering, hmm.

Do baby animals and adult animals look the same, or do they look different sometimes?

I decided that, as a scientist, I definitely want to investigate this just a little bit more.

Do you think that you can come and investigate with me?

What do you think?

Maestro, how about you?

Do you wanna come and investigate with us?

He looks like he might be ready for an investigation as well.

Let's see what we come up with.

So I want to do a little bit of an investigation about animal parents and animal babies.

I wonder, my question.

The wondering that I have is if animal parents and animal babies look the same.

So I already know that when baby animals and parents have body parts that look really close to being the same, we can say that those parts are similar.

Can you say that word at home?

Similar.

Similar.

Here's an example of what I need.

When two things are similar, they are really, really close to being the same without being exactly the same.

Here's a picture of my dog Maestro.

He is actually 12 years old.

Now, if he were a human, he would not be an adult yet, but dogs don't live as long as humans do.

For a dog, he actually is an adult, and not a baby, or a puppy.

He's not even really a teenage dog.

He's an adult.

Here's a picture of a puppy that's the same kind of dog as Maestro.

Let's look at some of their parts and compare them.

Let's start with their ears.

They both have ears that sit on top of their head like this.

Some dogs don't have ears on top of their head.

Some dogs have ears that are on the sides of their head.

This puppy that you can see in this picture has ears that look a little bit floppy, and Maestro's ears sit on top of his head, and they're pointed up most of the time.

You can see that their ears are similar, but they're not exactly the same.

They're really, really close, though.

Let's take a look at their eyes.

What do you notice?

Can you compare Maestro's eyes with the puppy's eyes?

Take a look at their eyes.

Both of them have brown eyes that are really in the front of their face.

Their eyes are not on the sides.

Their eyes are not up top.

Their eyes are right in front.

They're very similar.

Let's take a look at their markings.

Do you see what color they are?

Both of these dogs are black and tan.

Can you see how they both have black and tan colors on their fur?

They're very similar in that way.

Their markings are similar.

One more thing that's similar about them is their size.

Now size is kind of tricky.

So let's pay close attention to be sure we don't get tricked.

When we're looking at a baby animal, most of the time, the baby animal is smaller than the adult animal.

So a puppy will be smaller than an adult dog that's the same kind of dog.

Maestro is a kind of dog that's called a Yorkshire Terrier.

Some people call them Yorkies for short.

Yorkies, even when they're adult dogs, they don't get to be very big.

They're kind of small dogs, but Yorkie puppies are smaller than adult Yorkies.

Does that make sense?

So we know that this puppy, even though it's small now, will still get bigger than it is.

It will grow up to be an adult dog, but it will still be small, just bigger than it was as a puppy.

Let's take a look at another example of a dog.

We're going to compare my neighbor's dog, Sasha, to Maestro, so you can see what I mean by different kinds of dogs.

Take a look at this photo of Sasha.

You can see that Sasha is a bigger dog than Maestro.

Do you see any things that are similar about them?

Can you see Sasha's ears?

Are her ears pointed up like Maestro, or are her ears on the side of her head and floppy?

What do you notice?

What about their size?

Do Sasha and Maestro look like they are the same size?

What do you think?

As you're thinking about these two dogs, you should know that Sasha is also an adult dog.

She has grown as much as she's going to grow, even as she gets older.

She is not a puppy anymore.

Do you see, is their size similar, or is their size different?

What do you think?

I noticed that they are pretty different in size.

Sasha is a bigger dog than Maestro.

Now that we're talking about the difference between baby animals and adult animals, I think we can probably look at some other animals besides dogs, and see what we notice.

When we're talking about what we notice, we can use our five senses to help us figure out what we see, what we hear.

Sometimes we might use our sense of smell, or taste, or touch, but for the observations that we're going to make about animal parents and animal babies, most of our observations, most of the things we notice, we'll notice with our eyes.

Okay?

So let's make a chart to help us with our observations.

So here we've made a chart to help us answer the question that we had about animal parents and animal babies.

I took a moment and wrote our question at the top of our chart in orange.

Can you see?

It says, "Do animal parents and babies look similar?"

And that's the question that I had about animal parents and babies after I looked at some of the pictures that my friends sent.

So let's pick a couple of animals and talk about it.

We already started off by talking about dogs.

So on my chart, I'm going to write down Dog.

And what did we observe when we looked at the picture of Maestro, remember my dog, who's an adult, and a picture of a puppy that's the same kind of dog?

What did we notice?

Did you notice that there were parts that were similar?

I think we talked about how their ears are similar.

So I'm going to write down ears.

Ears.

We also talked about how the dogs had other things that were similar.

We talked about their ears, but do you remember we also talked about their eyes?

One of the things that we noticed that was similar was where their eyes are on their body.

So I'm also going to write down eyes, because their eyes were similar.

The last thing that we noticed about dogs that was similar was their, do you remember the word for that?

So not just what color they are, but also some of the patterns that's in their fur.

There was a special word that we used for that.

Do you remember?

It starts with the letter M. Markings.

So we noticed that the puppy and the adult dog had very similar markings.

Now let's go on to another animal that we've already taken a look at.

I'm actually going to use a different color marker too, so that we can keep track of what animals we're talking about.

Do you remember the photos of the baby birds that I showed you?

Those baby birds that were in the nest in the window that my friend sent, those birds are called finches.

Can you say that with me?

Finches.

Your turn.

Finches.

The baby finches were about four weeks old.

They're still babies.

They are not adults.

And I started to wonder, hmm, do baby finches look like, or similar to, adult finches?

Or are they very different than adult finches?

So here's what I decided to do.

I'm going to write down finches here on my chart.

Finches.

And finches are a kind of bird.

So I went and found a picture of adult finches, so that I can compare the babies to the adults.

Let's take a look together and see what we can observe with our eyes.

Take a look at this photo of the baby finches, and these photos of adult finches.

What do you notice?

What can you observe?

What do you see that we might say is similar between the baby finches and the adult finches?

When I look at the baby finches, I took a look at their color and their markings, just like we talked about with the dog.

And I noticed that the baby finches are mostly brown, and maybe a little bit gray.

So I noticed that they're brown and gray, but we'll take a look at the adult finches.

Are they the same, brown and gray markings, or do they look different than the babies?

Look at their feathers.

What do you see?

I can see that the baby finches have the brown and gray markings that we noticed before.

But if you look at the adult finches, their feathers look a little bit different.

I can see that the head feathers on the adult finches look like they're kind of reddish.

Can you see that?

Reddish feathers?

They're not really brown or gray.

They almost look red, but then I compare that to the markings on the baby finches.

And I didn't see reddish feathers.

What do you think?

Do their head feathers look similar, or do their head feathers look different to you?

So I'm going to write down something about the birds that is not similar.

The finches, the adults have red head feathers, and I'm going to put an A for adult, but the babies had brown and gray feathers, and I'm gonna put down a B for babies.

Then I kept looking at the finches, and even though the adults have those red head feathers, I noticed that once I looked at the back feathers, those were brown and gray, similar to the babies' back feathers.

So I'm going to write down that that's one way they are similar.

And those were their back feathers.

So I'm going to write down that they had brown and gray back feathers, because that is something we noticed that is similar between the adult finches and the baby finches.

Now I'm gonna switch colored markers again, because sometimes it helps us to organize if we can color code what we're looking at.

Hold on just a moment.

Now let's take a look at another animal that we've already observed as a baby.

Do you remember this sweet photo of a baby bunny?

We're going to write down bunny.

Take a look at the photo of the baby bunny again.

If we needed to describe the baby bunny, what does it look like?

What would you say?

What can you observe with your eyes?

I noticed that the baby bunny is white, the baby bunny has long ears, and the baby bunny looks like it's small in size.

Now take a look at this picture of an adult bunny.

What do you notice about the adult bunny?

Is there anything that we could say is similar?

What do you think is similar between the two pictures of the bunnies?

You're right.

These two bunnies have the same markings.

They are both white markings.

How about their ears?

Do you think they're similar, or are they not similar?

What do you think?

Give me a thumbs up if you think that their ears are similar.

You are right.

Their ears are very similar.

They're not exactly the same, but they're pretty close.

Anything else that you noticed that is similar between the two bunnies?

You are right.

They both look like they're very snuggly, but that really isn't a science fact, so I'm not going to write it on our chart this time, but I don't disagree with you.

They both look like they would be great to snuggle and cuddle.

If you would like to continue learning about animal parents and babies this summer at camp, you can definitely learn more at your local community library.

You can look for books about animals, animal babies, and animal parents.

(bird chirping) See if you can read more about how they are the same, and how they can be different.

Can you hear that bird singing in the background?

I bet that bird is an adult and not a baby, (bird chirping) because animal babies don't sound the same as animal adults.

I guess that's one way we can make an observation with our ears.

(laughs) We've talked so much about animal parents and babies today.

Let's take a minute to review the things that we've learned.

We learned that animal babies look similar to their parents, but not exactly the same.

Do you remember the baby finches, how they looked different than the adult finches?

They may have some parts that are really close to being the same, and so we use the word similar to describe what we observed.

I am so glad that you were able to join us for today's lesson here in Room 9 Summertime.

Thank you for joining us today.

Until next time, this is Ms. Turnage, saying see you later.

(cheerful music) - [Announcer] Teaching in Room 9 is made possible with support of Bank of America, Dana Brown Charitable Trust, Emerson, and viewers like you.