We started one of my most favorite units this week–our Living and Nonliving unit!  I had the kiddos draw and write about what they thought Living and Nonliving meant and had them write or draw about it in their Science Notebooks:

I LOVE Kindergarten writing!! 🙂

She’s writing “We are living”.

“Mrs. Poindexter, this is a paper heart, not a real heart, real hearts beat, paper hearts do not”.

As they notebooked, I walked around asking them what “living” and “nonliving” meant to them and why they chose to draw or write some of the things they did.  I used this as kind of a pre-assessment to help me figure out how long we needed to spend on defining what living and nonliving mean to this group.  They did a pretty good job with their choices and were able to give several reasons why they drew and wrote what they did.

We got together in partners after they had 10 minutes to draw and write to discuss with their partners about what they chose to write or draw about.  Its always so interesting to me to listen in on their conversations and hear what their thinking is and the understanding behind their thinking.

Kristen 🙂

Because we’ve been talking so much about living/nonliving things, I wanted to see where the kids were in their understanding, so I set up 6 stations around the room (3 living/3 nonliving) and the kids had a chart to check out each of the items and answer a few questions in their science notebooks:

Here they are looking at a red worm. That kept their attention for AWHILE! 🙂

Why did you put a book on this plate Mrs. Poindexter? It’s just a book!  “Yes, it’s just a book, but what do you observe about it?” OH, they said! 🙂

Where’s the thing we’re supposed to observe?  Right there.  That’s a pencil.  I know, that’s what you’re supposed to observe.  But it’s a pencil.  I know! 🙂

More of the popular red worm! 🙂

Here the poor thing is curled up and scared. 🙂 He was later safely returned to his home in our compost box!

Noodles?  That’s silly Mrs. Poindexter!  You eat them!  So are they living or nonliving?

The meal worm out of the meal worm tank in our classroom–easiest classroom pet EVER and good for so many things! 🙂

These are 5 of the items I had out.  The 6th one was my assistant.  She sat at one of the tables and the kids had to figure out if she was breathing, moving, and if she would stop living one day, and then if she were living or nonliving.

The red worm…getting comfortable and all stretched out!

Pencil

Book

Noodles

Meal worm

These great dishes and bowls are from the kids section at IKEA.  They are so handy and I use them all the time to hold different materials.  The cups that match this set are great too–an awesome size for storing crayons and sorting them by color.

Kristen 🙂

After we created our living/nonliving flip book, we created two pages (over two days) showing what we had learned after our discussions and hands on examples of living and nonliving things.  Again, we glued these into our science notebook when we were done. 🙂

Kristen 🙂

We’ve started our new unit about living and nonliving things and I wanted to see what misconceptions we had about living and nonliving things before we began.  We made these quick little flip books (and by we, I mean the kids made them while watching me model what to do).  They turned out great!  We glued them into our science notebooks.

I forgot to get pictures of what the kids did, but here is what mine looked like:

The kiddos drew two living things and two nonliving things under each flap.  I checked them afterwards and I saw that although they truly understood what a living thing was, we needed some more work on what a nonliving thing actually is! 🙂

Kristen 🙂