Spell Bee Word: Embryo

What does embryo mean?

Word: Embryo

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: Embryo means a baby animal or human in its earliest stage of growth inside an egg or the mother's body; also the tiny young plant inside a seed.

Word origin: From a Greek word meaning something that grows inside.

How do you spell embryo?

Syllables: em - bry - o

Tricky part: Students who spell it by ear often slip an extra e into the middle.

Watch out for: embroy, embreyo, embyro

Memory tip: Many embryos grow inside an egg, and the word starts with the same e as egg.

Embryo in a sentence

Example 1: Under the microscope we could see the chick embryo's tiny beating heart.

Example 2: The embryo of a frog develops inside a jelly-like egg in the pond.

Example 3: Workers at the fish farm checked thousands of tiny embryos in the hatchery tanks.

Fun Fact

If you soak a bean overnight and split it in two, you can see the embryo: a tiny plant that already has a small root and a pair of first leaves.

Practise the CREST Way

Spell-o-Spell

Choose the incorrectly spelt word:

a) embrio
b) foetus
c) placenta
d) zygote

Word Cookie

Insert the correct pair of letters to form a word:

e_bry_

a) m, o
b) n, a
c) n, o
d) m, a

Mingle-Mangle

Form a meaningful word from the jumbled letters:

yobrem

a) ember
b) memory
c) embryo
d) embroil

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Which of these begins life as an embryo inside an egg?

a) a kitten
b) a crocodile
c) a calf
d) a puppy

2. In a bean seed, the embryo gets its first food from the ____.

a) cotyledons
b) seed coat
c) soil
d) sunlight