Sharing our planet with living and non-living neighbors

Reminding the children about sharing resources with other people leads to discussing sharing those same resources with the myriad other life forms on earth, most of which pre-date and outnumber us! I also wanted to introduce rocks and minerals, so why not distinguish between living things (plants and animals), and non-living things (rocks, minerals, water etc).
I put a bunch of different toy plants (play food, plastic flowers), toy animals and bugs, shells, rocks and minerals into a brown bag and each child blind-selected 2 items. We identified each item and categorized it as plant or animal (living) or non-living (never alive rather than dead, extinct etc). I got a wealth of tales about grandparents dying when we approached the 'once alive' area, some of which were really touching and interesting I must say, and initially sidetracked me for a large part of the lesson! Anyway I deflected further family history and got down to dividing the items on 3 large trays - Animal, Plant and Non-Living. Basically, living things grow and reproduce and non-living things do not. It's not an easy concept for 3s and 4s and I slipped in a tricky one - a unicorn (doesn't exist) and a shell (you try to guess that one!!).

Hmm. apples are, um, oh - plants!!

animal, vegetable or mineral?

 Where do we humans put ourselves?

Somehow this picture refuses to stand up but you get the idea - yes, we are all animals!

Balancing ecosystems is delicate and removing one item can bring them tumbling if we don't look at their interrelationships - let's illustrate this with a balancing game they can take turns at. Who can remove one item without tipping the pile?

ecosystem balancing game

getting that rock out was hard!

 Man-made disasters like an oil spill or rainforest logging (Fern Gully, the last rainforest) were mentioned and we brainstormed ways we could help prevent more of the same in the future. Books like 'Oil Spill!' by Melvin Berger are also food for thought and offer possible ways we can help.