Preschool Living and Not Living worksheets

About this worksheet

Telling living things from things that are not alive is one of the first sorting jobs in science, and children are often puzzled by it. A four-year-old may say a car is alive because it moves and makes noise, or that a tree is not alive because it stays still. This page asks one question on every row: which one is alive? Each row has a single living thing, an animal or a plant, beside things that are not alive.

Talk about the clues together: a living thing grows, needs food or water, and one day makes more of its own kind. A ball, a cup or a rock does none of that, however much it rolls. Use the page as a walk-and-talk starter at home, naming what is alive in the kitchen, the garden and the street. There is no single right way to explain it; the circle is the start of the conversation.

What your child will learn

• Tell a living thing from a thing that is not alive
• Know that plants are alive even though they stay still
• Know that things that move, like a car, are not necessarily alive
• Say why: it grows and needs food or water

Head Start ELOF standard: P-SCI 3, K-LS1-1