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Biodiversity is a big word for all the different kinds of living things on Earth.

Scientists have named more than a million and a half kinds of living things. Most of them are insects!

There are many more kinds that nobody has found or named yet.

We need biodiversity. Living things give us food, clean air, drinking water and things like medicines, clothes and paper.

Experiment: How many kinds of leaves?

1. Go outside with your teacher to two places: a mown lawn and a hedge or a wild corner.
2. In each place, collect fallen leaves from the ground (only from the ground!). Put them in a bag.
3. Back in class, tip out the leaves from the first bag. Put leaves that look the same in one pile.
4. Count the piles: how many different kinds of leaves did you find?
5. Do the same with the second bag.
6. Which place had more kinds of leaves? That place has more biodiversity.

Place	Number of different kinds of leaves
Mown lawn
Hedge or wild corner

Questions

1. Draw three different kinds of living things you saw today.

   🍎

2. Which place had more kinds of leaves?

   mown lawn / hedge

3. Write one thing that living things give us.

Sources for every fact on this sheet: echoesof.science/school/biodiversity/sources/

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