Life Science, Week 2

Living & Nonliving Things

Science was fairly low-key this week. We continued our study of living and nonliving things with an outdoor lab.


Thursday

• Read Living Things in My Back Yard by Bobbie Kalman.
• Completed RSO Living Lab #2: Plot Study.

Other Books of Interest

• One Small Square: Backyard - Donald Silver (On hold at library.)

* RSO = R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey


Plot Study

We lucked out! With temperatures in the 80s and no precipitation, today was the perfect day for our plot study. Tonight, it will drop near freezing and then won't get much above 50 degrees tomorrow...plus rain!!

Even though I think this is a great lab, I was kind of dreading it for some reason. Probably because I had to go downstairs to dig out our tent stakes. Probably too because it required us going outside with no other option. Besides having to keep Tessa wrangled, it turned out just fine. More than fine, actually.

I used a yardstick, tent stakes and red yarn to section off a portion of our overgrown garden. I went ahead and did this ahead of time in order to save time during the lab.

Tessa scrutinized a mushroom with her hand lens, which she later declared a living thing. Other living things she found were a tomato plant, spider, butterfly, clover, grub worm, grasshopper, grass and acorn (dead). Nonliving things were far less plentiful. She only found a piece of red string, plant marker and tomato cage. 

We brought in a couple of samples for the drawing portion of the lab. Tessa decided on the grub worm (living thing) and the string (nonliving thing). Afterward, I filled in the rest of the lab sheet with our findings.