After the kids did the leaf dichotomous key as a quiz, they created Button Dichotomous keys. I give kids a bag of buttons and they make dichotomous keys. Here are instructions for making dichotomous keys. Look at the pasta example. You could give your teen a bag of different pasta, too. I bought a bag from Walmart. (You may have odd buttons. Use them.) The kids classified the buttons initially by the number of holes, from zero to four holes. (Some buttons have a shank instead of a hole.) Then they sorted by shape, type (wood, metal, plastic), and color. We did the activity in class; in the past the kids did it at home. It was a disaster. I test their keys by taking a random button to see if I can key it using their key. I’m confident the kids understand dichotomous keys.
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