Living or Non-Living?

We've been talking about the difference between living and non-living things in the forest, and noticing that sometimes it's not so clear.

We collected a worm, centipede, polypore mushroom, a piece of shale, grass, and fern, a green leaf, a brown leaf, and some tree nuts, and then we looked closely at each one and talked about whether it is living or non-living.

We made some interesting discoveries. Some of the living things moved, but not all of them, and a green leaf is alive, until you pick it off the tree. A nut comes from a living tree and could grow into a new tree, but is it living? We ended the activity with more questions than answers.