Living Things Need Three Magic Things...

Happy New Year! I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday and have settled back into the routines of school and work.
We've begun our new science unit, Living Things and Non-Living Things, which we'll revisit many times throughout the remainder of the year. Last week, however, I asked the students
What are the three things ALL living things have in common?
I got lots and lots....and lots...of answers ranging from talking to walking to sleeping to eating pizza! But, in the end I told the students there are only THREE magic things any living thing needs in order to be alive and they are:
1. Water2. Food3. Air(MA Science Standards, Living Things/Biology, Characteristics of Living Things)
The students weren't totally sold, they thought that living things needed to talk (or bark or meow), but I asked them if a tree is alive. They all agreed that a tree, or any other plant, is alive but that it cannot talk. I asked them if trees could get up and walk to a sunnier side of the forrest, the answer to that one got lots of laughs and a few "nooooooo!"'s. 
Then we played a little game where we each got a card with a picture of either a living or non-living thing. 

Then, we began to categorize the cards in either living or non-living thing groups.

We figured out that worms are living things.

Books are NOT living things!

Each student got a chance to add a card to the categories and we came up with these groupings.

 The last card in the non-living things group can be tricky for some students to understand - sticks. When the inevitable question comes up that a stick is a tree that's alive, I ask them "but, is that stick on the ground still part of the tree that drinks water and food from the ground or breathes air through its leaves?" The kids then understand that sometimes living things become non-living things like the sticks, but a stick can never be a living thing again. Pretty heavy stuff for 2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon!