Year 5 Curriculum Learning

Tuesday 30th June 2020 Mammals

Today we will be learning a bit more about the life cycle of mammals.

Can you remember what a mammal is? A mammal is a particular type of animal. There are two things that make mammals special: Mammals make milk to feed their babies. They are all warm blooded. This means they can maintain a constant body temperature, independent of the temperature of their environment. This is the life cycle of an animal that does not live in the Amazon – the rabbit! Mammals use sexual reproduction to produce their offspring.

A male’s sperm cell will fuse with the ovum, the female gamete. When this happens, the ovum is fertilised.

This fertilised cell splits in half, creating two cells. These cells continue to divide, so that the number of cells doubles each time. Eventually, the cells will form a baby, and the heart starts to beat.

The baby will grow inside the female for the length of the pregnancy. This is known as the gestation period. At the end of the pregnancy, the baby is born. But there are a few species of mammals that do not follow this life cycle exactly.

The first are marsupials.

Their young are born incompletely developed. They are then carried and fed in a pouch on the female's stomach until they are fully developed.

Examples of marsupials are kangaroos, koalas and also the Sulawesi Bear Cuscus that live in rainforests in Indonesia.

Task:

You need to choose a mammal that lives in a rainforest and create a piece of learning that describes its life cycle.

How you choose to present this is up to you. However, on the next few slides are examples of how you might like to complete this.

But you will need to draw the mammal at the different stages of its life cycle and write some sentences to describe that stage.

Once again, we are looking for technical scientific vocabulary such as: - Gestation - Embryo - Adolescence - Reproduce - Mammal - Marsupial (if you choose one)

You may have to do some research online to find out about your chosen animal. I would recommend that you research alongside an adult or use a child friendly search engine like Kiddle. We would love to see your learning so remember to send it to: [email protected] The rabbit embryo grows inside the female rabbit. The gestation lasts for about 27 days. The adult male adult will mate The baby rabbit drinks with an adult milk from its mother. female rabbit As it grows, it and reproduce. develops fur and starts to eat solid food. The young rabbit grows and develops into an adolescent. A blank template for you to use with your own animal will be available.