Living and Non-living Things: Level One
Learning Center:
Have the children cut out pictures of living and non-living things from magazines and newspapers. Ask the children to separate the living things from the non-living things. Display the words living and non-living on a nearby bulletin board. Have the students glue/tack the pictures under the correct heading. Help the children label each picture for future reference.
Books:
Arbuthnot and Root.
Time for Poetry
. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman & Company, 1968. (especially: “At the Seaside, “Upon the Beach,” and “Shore.”)
Farjeon, Eleanor.
Eleanor Farneon’s Poems for Children
. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, l951. (“especially: “Waves” and “Sand.”)
Mizumura, Kazue.
I See the Winds
. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, l966.
Mini-Field Trip:
Take the children on a walk around the school grounds or in a nearby park to help the children become more aware of living and non-living things in their environment. Have the children observe, classify, and label the things they have found. Help the children construct a mobile of living things and non-living things. Hang the mobiles in the classroom or school hallway.
objectives:
To observe and describe properties of living and non-living things. To identify living and non-living things shown in pictures. To identify living and non-living things found in the school yard/local park.
Concepts:
*Living things eat, move and grow.
Vocabulary:
living/ non-living
Materials:
-
bulletin board/ labels for objects/ magazines/ newspapers/ paste/tacks string/ hangers/ poster board/ living things/ non-living things
Motivation:
Point to different things in the classroom and various objects seen through the windows. Ask the children to classify these things as living or not living. Ask them how they know whether something is alive or not.
Lesson:
Tell the children that they will be studying the differences between living and non-living things. Show the children a picture with living and non-living things displayed. Ask them to look at the picture and describe what they see happening. In three columns on a poster board write the words eating moving and growing. Define each term (eating: taking food into the body; moving: changing position without help from anything around it; growing: getting bigger). Ask the children to name the things in the picture that are eating, moving and growing, and list them under the appropriate poster column(s). Show the children another picture and repeat the above exercise.
Write the word living on the chalkboard and pronounce it. Tell the children that all living things eat, move and grow. Ask the children how the various living things in the last picture shown are alike.
Open up the learning center and display the two pictures used in the lesson for future reference.
Subject Integration:
Mathematics:
classification
Art:
mobiles and mural displays