Aims | Outline | Curriculum Relevance | Background | Activities |
The Blue Dragon
Programme 2: The Grouping Game
The programme aims to encourage children to think
about classification through ideas and questions that the
characters in the story raise.
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In this episode Cinders, the blue dragon, wonders
where her mother is and wanders around asking a range of animals,
including ducks, 'Are you my mother?' The characters begin to group
according to how many legs they have, whether they have feathers,
and matching tracks.
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The programme
explores:
- animal life cycles;
- grouping animals;
- different kinds of animals.
There are many curriculum links that can be made, for
example:
English – creating
riddles.
Design Technology – design a
recipe for a meal using potatoes.
Art – design a poster about
potatoes.
Maths – sorting into
groups.
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The series develops The Blue Dragon Cookery Book.
From this programme children could collect pictures of different
kinds of potatoes to place in the Big Book, eg King Edward,
Desiré, as well as pictures from magazines of different
foods that are made from potatoes. For example
- frozen chips
- French fries
- roasted potatoes
- potato waffles
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Classification is an important concept in science and
children are expected to be able to sort and group animals
according to key physical characteristics, such as feathers, number
of legs, whether they live in water, etc. Classifying relies on
children recognising similarities rather than differences.
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