The 5 Kingdoms Of Living Things For Children
It is very important to instill in children a love for nature and respect for the environment. And for this, it is essential that they know it. Not all children are lucky enough to be able to live in the country. But, for those days that you make a getaway to nature, let’s see if we can help you with a simple explanation of the 5 kingdoms of living beings for children.
Until the 19th century, all living beings were included in two kingdoms: Animalia and Plantae . However, from that time on, coinciding with the use of new observation techniques, new organisms were discovered that had no place in the previous kingdoms, such as fungi and bacteria.
For this reason, in 1985, Lynn Margulis together with V. Schwartz decided to adapt the old 1969 classification into five kingdoms by R. Whittakker, and named them as follows: Monera, Protoctista, Fungi, Plantae and Animalia.
What are the kingdoms of living things explained for kids, and how are living organisms classified?
In biology, each kingdom represents a large subdivision to which living beings belong based on taxonomic characteristics and the evolutionary relationship between them. In other words: for an organism to belong to a specific kingdom, it must comply with common and general characteristics typical of that kingdom.
Thus, although a squirrel and a shark are very different, they both belong to the same group, the Animal Kingdom. Likewise, each kingdom is divided into different categories or taxa in order to classify living beings. There are six taxonomic categories: phylum , class, order, family, genus, and species.
The last taxonomic category, that of the species, is what determines who we are, it is the identity stamp of the individuals that belong to it. Two words of Latin or Greco-Latin origin are used to name them scientifically.
For this reason, this system is known as binomial nomenclature, and we owe it to Linnaeus, who was a Swedish naturalist, scientist, botanist and zoologist in the 18th century.
5 kingdoms of living things for kids
Monera kingdom
Bacteria, archaea and mycoplasmas belong to it. Van Leeuwenhoek was the first to observe them in the 17th century. Archaea are the oldest organisms on the planet, at 3.8 billion years old.
- They are unicellular prokaryotes because they do not have a nucleus.
- They can live in the most diverse and extreme habitats that we can imagine, alone or forming colonies. Even inside our body.
- Some are beneficial and some make us sick.
- They are microscopic beings. They measure between 0.2 and 0.3 microns in diameter.
- Its morphology can be round, elongated, comma-shaped or corkscrew.
Protoctist kingdom
It’s a bit of a drawer disaster. All organisms that have no place in other kingdoms end up here. It encompasses both unicellular and multicellular organisms. It includes protozoa and algae, very different beings from each other. But there are some characteristics that define them as a kingdom.
- They are grouped in colonies, normally, although they are little specialized and little differentiated.
- Some can move thanks to structures called cilia or flagella, which are like small tails that act as rotors.
- Protozoa live in water, soil or inside other organisms, causing them diseases such as Trypanosoma brucei, responsible for sleeping sickness.
- The algae live in the seas, rivers, forming part of the marine plankton or fixed to the rocks. They can enter into symbiosis with fungi and form organisms called lichens.
Fungi kingdom, the third of the kingdoms of living beings
It is the kingdom of fungi and yeasts. Some mushrooms are known by the nickname of mushrooms, and these can be exquisite, such as Boletus edulis, or tremendously poisonous, such as Amanita muscaria or dwarf mushroom.
- We find multicellular organisms, like fungi, or unicellular, like yeast.
- They live fixed to a place but, above all, they like humid places.
- They are responsible for decomposing organic matter and dead beings. So its work is very important in nature, returning nutrients to the earth.
- Yeasts, in turn, are very important in the food industry. Thanks to them we can make bread or beer.
vegetal kingdom
It is made up of all the plants that inhabit the Earth. From the largest trees on the planet, such as the Sequoias, at 94 meters high, to the Wolffia, which is the smallest plant in the world, at 1.3mm.
- They are multicellular, capable of making their own food thanks to sunlight through a process called photosynthesis.
- They live fixed to the earth but respond to light stimuli and move towards them slightly.
- They contribute oxygen to the atmosphere, essential for life on Earth.
animal Kingdom
It is the largest of all kingdoms. Animals inhabit any part of the planet, seas, jungles, deserts … It includes both invertebrate animals, such as butterflies, chondrichthyans, such as sharks, or vertebrates such as us humans.
- They are multicellular eukaryotes, they have a nucleus inside their cells.
- They breathe the oxygen produced by plants.
- They do show mobility, at least in the environment in which they live.
- They feed on other organisms; they cannot make their own food.
- His diet is the most varied. They can be: herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, insectivores, detritivores or parasites.
And to finish…
We hope you find this little guide useful to explain the five kingdoms of living beings to your children and that you enjoy nature as a family.
