Is It Living?

Hey Science Friends,

I am always on the hunt and lookout for the perfect book. You know the kind of book that can say and illustrate a concept that presents a concept that is easily understood by young learners. I am so fortunate that I work with teachers that not only share that passion but share it with me and share their books! This week we have been discussing living and nonliving and this book just added to that discussion. But what I love about the book the most is that it also lends to a discussion about offspring. 

Do You Know Which Ones Will Grow?

Our objective is to differentiate between living and nonliving things based on whether they have basic needs and produce offspring. I couldn't have been passed that book at a more perfect time because it not only added to our discussion but everyone was eager to share what they were thinking with each turn of the page. The book also gave us plenty of ideas to generate a great shared writing list and when it came time to notebook about it, we all had a lot to pull from. This year the children love notebooking in both math and science and if I tell them we are using our notebooks they are pretty excited and totally engaged.

As we were just about to leave for the week someone took note of one of the last slides we had looked at and asked...

Is that seed living or nonliving? Is that a baby apple?

This question gives us a great starting point for next week as we justify our thinking and discuss basic needs of plants and animals and examine evidence that living organisms have basic needs such as food, water and shelter for animals and air, water and nutrients, sunlight and space for plants. 

We used this PowerPoint about living and nonliving to help with our discussion and provide us with real world examples to discuss living and nonliving. Next week we will be justifying our thinking by posing the question...

How do you know?

I am sure we will all have fun discussing our favorite living and nonliving things and sharing with each other how we know it is living or not! 

Are You Living?



Hey Science friends,

I am so excited to finally finish my I Can Be A Scientist~Learning About Living Things. In the previous years my students have really enjoyed slide presentations mainly because of the images. I don't blame them because I do to. Real images of living and non living things in our world can be breathtaking. As I have spent the summer camping in state parks in Texas, I am amazed at the beauty of nature that often we simply ignore. But when you have time to really look around there are beautiful shapes, colors and textures all around us but sometimes we are just too busy to notice. Considering I have spent the summer really observing living and nonliving things I was really excited to work on this project.  

This PowerPoint Presentation is full of slides and guided questions to help aid in discussions of living and nonliving and basic needs. When I am teaching Science, I love to have real life images and books that support what we are learning but that has been a challenge to find over the years. And because of that, I began to collect images.

The presentation has several rounds of high quality images that will go along with what we are learning and discussing in class. The guided questions are there to help scaffold the learning of new concepts. After a few rounds, the children are encouraged to justify their responses.

I know a plant is living because...

After we have spent three days of learning, discussing and notebooking about living and nonliving things and basic needs we move on to sorts. These can be printed, laminated and stored in Science centers or take home bags. We discuss and sort. When the children are using these independently or in small groups I get a chance to observe and listen and make note of any misconceptions. So while they are busy, I am busy assessing as I roam around. It is pretty simple. To conclude the unit I have enclosed printables that the children will use to record their thinking about living and nonliving things and basic needs. These printables serve as their documentation of learning.

And if you are anything like me and you love the ease of PowerPoint, you can add, delete or multiply slides. You can create more rounds of each series of slides because the kids will always ask for another round. If you need more information just click on the images above! Have fun investigating friends!