Science: What is Life?

In case you missed it, we are using Real Science Oddessy - Life for science this year.  Since Green Bubbles is only in Kindergarten we my plan right now is to stretch this out into next year by adding in a lot of extras including science kits, videos, and tons of books!  I thought it would be fun to go over exactly what we do and what we add on though soo... Week 1!

The first unit is about What Is Life?  There were two activities to complete and we didn't really add on to anything this week since we are easing our way into school.  The first unit was a comparison of different things using the characteristics of life.  We compared two things that were alive to two things that weren't.  Green Bubbles did well at this and picked up some of the harder to see characteristics pretty easily including respiration (which he just called breathing).  We even talked about how plants 'breathe' too. 

The second project was more hands on, and a little dirty!  We did a plot study where the intent was to find different things that were alive and not alive.  While the instructions recommended a wild area, we just used my over grown planter box.

A lot of plants were recently pulled but there's still a lot to see.  Green Bubbles found bugs, mushrooms, and of course my tomatoes and carrots.  He found signs that animals had been there and pointed them out to me all by himself including the leaves eaten by caterpillars, or really cabbage loopers since we caught a few in our bug house and watched them cacoon and turn into moths.  He also found one of my tomatoes eatten right off the stem.  I have no idea what animal did that.

We recorded all our findings on our log and Green Bubbles drew a picture of his alive and not alive items (a mushroom and a dead leaf).

And then, as always happens when we are outside, Green Bubbles and Little Miss decided to water the garden.  It starts off cute, but always turns into a water fight with two soaked children.  Perfect play for a hot summer day.