The Mr Men Mating game Variation and Inheritance

The Mr Men Mating game! Variation and Inheritance

Characteristics • A characteristic is a feature of an organism. It can be something we can see (like hair colour) or something we can’t see (like blood group). • All humans have different combinations of characteristics, meaning we all look different. • These differences in our characteristics is called variation.

Inherited Characteristics • These are features that we get passed down to us from our parents. • They are coded for by genes – little bits of DNA in our cells’ nuclei. • We get half of our genes from our mother and half from our father.

Meet our Mr Men And our Little Misses

Inherited Characteristics ½ a set of instructions for making you from your dad ½ a set of instructions for making you from your mum

Inherited Characteristics This cell goes on to develop into…

Inherited Characteristics These ‘instructions’ are called GENES. Each gene codes for a separate CHARACTERISTIC Gene for blonde hair from mother Gene for skin tone from father

What if they had a child. . . ?

Environmental Characteristics • Some of our features are determined by how we live and the choices we make, for example what we eat and where we live. • These are environmental characteristics. • Some characteristics can be both, for example weight.

Tasks Choose a Mr Men and a Little Miss character (slides 1 or 4). Draw them as well as a possible offspring they may have and label the characteristics the offspring has inherited from each parent. EXT to explain, using DNA, genetics and variation why this happens. Do this at least twice, but more if you like.