Monday, September 12, 2011

Living or Nonliving

To kick off science, we do a living and nonliving mini-unit. It's a good lead-in to our apple unit coming up.  Here are two activities that the kids really enjoy:

1. Searching for living and nonliving items on the playground.

We're always looking for an excuse to do science outside, especially while the weather is so nice! We do this activity after we've already read about living and nonliving things and learned a cute little song (by someone named Carol Ogden) to help us remember how to identify living vs. nonliving.



You can download this activity with directions here.

2. Living or nonliving experiment:
I did not create this experiment, but I did make the worksheet to go with it. This experiment is from our science program. I made the worksheet to go along with it to reinforce the scientific method.



Call students over in small groups to observe mealworms in a container with bran meal and some rocks. They really enjoy using magnifying glasses to really look closely at the worms. As they observe, they need to ask themselves if the mealworms and rocks are living. They use what they've already learned about living vs. nonliving to help them decide.

To see more from my Living and nonliving unit, click here.


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6 comments:

  1. barbkiblerSeptember 13, 2011 at 3:56 PM

    Love these. I teach a k/1 class and can really use these ideas! Thank you for sharing!

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  2. kinderpondSeptember 13, 2011 at 5:26 PM

    Thanks for sharing, I am planning the same unit but not for a while-

    Did you see Laura's units? I think she has two :)

    http://larremoreteachertips.blogspot.com/


    Jennifer

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mrs. GiboneyJune 22, 2012 at 11:42 PM

    Thanks for sharing! I adapted to work with my 3rd grade science curriculum. We'll be making science notebooks this year. A first for me.

    teachonalimb.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousDecember 17, 2012 at 1:51 PM

    Thanks for sharing. I was trying to open the files but they seem to be having problems. Any chance you can repost?

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownJanuary 29, 2013 at 1:42 PM

    Hi there! I love love love this sheet (my favorite one after lots of searching!) but would like to be able to use it every time we do the scientific method, not just for one lesson. Is it possible to get a copy of this without all the worm text in the right column? Just with the steps down the left column. I was finding myself trying to recreate something similar and figured maybe first I should just ask! Let me know - thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ariana RoseOctober 16, 2013 at 12:44 PM

    Thank you for the download! I tweaked a few things to make it work for many experiments with my kids :)

    ReplyDelete