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Are You Dead or Alive?

What makes something living or nonliving?

Look closely at the picture at the right. Notice the rabbit. Click the rabbit to watch a movie showing it move!

What proves this bunny alive? We know it is alive because it moves, grows and has parents!

Is a plant a living thing? It grows and reproduces but doesn't move much. Animals usually move around a lot.

Organisms are all things that are alive. Plants are organisms. So plants are alive!

Here are the characteristics of living things:

  • Reproduce
  • Grow
  • Moves (that means it may creep, crawl, walk, run, fly, swim, jump, or hop)
  • Breathe
  • Eat
  • Makes waste

Examples of living things:

  • Animals
  • Plants
  • Insects
  • Birds
  • Snails
  • Worms

How about nonliving things? Nonliving things can move, but they do not grow or have parents.

Look close at these pictures:

These are nonliving things because they can not grow, reproduce, or have parents.

Here are the characteristics of nonliving things:

  • Do not breathe
  • Do not eat
  • Do not reproduce or have parents
  • Do not grow
  • Do not produce waste

Examples of nonliving things:

  • Rocks
  • Air
  • Water
  • Wind
  • Fire
  • Sound
  • Metal

Most of the time it is easy to tell if something is living or nonliving. But sometimes things that were once living are now nonliving things? Look at these shells.

They were once a part of something living but now they are nonliving.

Examples of once-living things:

  • Shells
  • Dead animals
  • Dried plants
  • Hair

Look at the pictures below. Click on the pictures of things that are living.
 
 

Download the plug-ins: Get Adobe Acrobat Reader , and Get Quicktime Player. (The QuickTime plug-in is needed to play sounds and movies correctly.)

Want to share photos of you or your friends doing this activity? Send it in an e-mail with the following information: the title of the activity, the URL (Internet address), and your name. Remember no picture can be used that shows a student face or has a student name on it.

Updated March 1, 2005 by: Glen Westbroek

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