The 7th graders ended their Unit and learned all about adaptations, speciation and evolution. The students had a ton of excitement in this lab as its main purpose was to model and simulate what life would be like if humans never evolved to have opposable Thumbs. Opposable means opposite of, the thumb is opposite (or perpendicular) to the other fingers therefore referred to as opposable. Our thumbs allow us to perform tasks with ease, but if we didn’t have these magnificent advantages, the simplest of tasks would be incredibly difficult to almost impossible.

In this lab our young scholars were split into groups and there was a designated timer, a person with full use of their hands and another person with their thumbs taped to their hands, which would limit their ability to use their hands. Both the person with full use of their hands and the person with their thumbs taped would perform the same tasks (1 at a time) and the 3rd person would time how long it took for each of them to perform the task(s). Tasks included; opening a ziplock bag, turning a book to a specific page, cutting clay, writing and more! To conclude, the students had a blast as they saw who was more efficient at completing the tasks and they understood the importance of opposable Thumbs as well as how evolution occurs.