Living or Nonliving?

We are just beginning our animal inquiry.  One of the first questions that the kids had was how you know if something is alive or not.  What makes a living thing a living thing?

We pretty much knew that plants and animals are living, but we weren't sure what the rules were for how you know if something is alive.

 During reading workshop we read books that had plants and animals and kept a list of how we know if something is living.

We came up with the following list, as we brainstormed ideas.

Next, we used our PebbleGo resource to confirm our thinking or to categorize it as a misconception.
If we found evidence of something on our list, we put a check next to it to confirm our thinking.  If we couldn't find evidence of something on our list, we put an X on it to mark it as a misconception.

We came up with this list.  We had some great discussion about the three items in the circle.  We agreed that living things come in different sizes, colors, and kinds but so do nonliving things.  We will be thinking about that as we do further research.

We also found out that living things have a life cycle.  We'll have to add that to our list!