Living and Nonliving

Gummy worms and earthworms

 Which one is living and which one nonliving? And more importantly...why?

First we observed gummy worms. Do the move by themselves? Do the breathe? Do they reproduce? Do they need food, water, or air? Do they grow and change? 

No! They are nonliving 

Then we observed earthworms. Do the move by themselves? Do the breathe? Do they reproduce? Do they need food, water, or air? Do they grow and change? 

Yes! Not only are they living but the students reactions when they held (or only touched) them was priceless! 

After we observed both, we filled out our observation sheet! We had a lot of fun! 

Living and Non Living

We loved looking at our worms and comparing them to gummy worms! 

Then we were given a gummy worm and were able to examine the traits of it. 

After exploring we filled out our graphic organizer and explained our thinking on what made each one living or non living. 

We also compared frogs and gummy frogs. 

Living and Nonliving

First I asked the question, How do you know if something is living or non living? 

I showed them pictures of different things and asked them to tell me if it was living it non living and how did they know. 

Some were easy to determine.  I showed a picture if a car, a table, a stuffed bear.  Easy!  Non living.  The hard part was verbalizing why. 

They said " because it's not alive".  I asked, What would make it alive?

 It doesn't  eat, if doesn't have legs, and it doesn't have a heart beat. 

Ok, now we are getting somewhere. One of the pictures was a flower. They were mixed on this.  They wet confused.  They had just said you had to have legs and a heart beat to be alive but the knew plants were alive.  

I loved hearing their thinking. 

Then it was said that some people are Nonliving, because they are dead.  (Oh the things 5 & 6 year olds will say.  

So I said  I had a dog named Bella.  Bella died in September. Bella was living at one time so she cannot be Nonliving. Nonliving things can't die.  

We talked and come up with what makes something living. There was in characteristics they couldn't figure out so I had to add reproduce.  I explained it as animals have babies and plants use seeds to make new plants. 

For example, tables do not make new tiny little tables but a dog can have puppies. 

I googled lots of lessons and found some great ideas on kindergartenkindergarten 😊. I love all the resources that are out there now. 

Next we filled out out chart to determine if the items were living or non living. 

We read What's Alive and then sorted by pictures by whether it was living or non living. 

For our  next activity we read,  Living and Nonliving and then drew a picture of something that is living and something that is non living.  

                       tree/crystal

                A person/a car 

                       flower/sun

        

We watched a video on Discovery Learning called Living and Nonliving. 

After it was over we went over the characteristics that makes something living or nonliving. 

I gave each child 2 pictures and they answered questions to determine their picture is living or nonliving. 

We compared frogs and gummy frogs ! 

Today we compared gummy worms and earthworms.