Alive, dead or never alive ks1 science

[Sofasurfer23]

KS1 science question. Something alive must meet 7 criteria (uses oxygen, reproduce etc)

Trees are alive while a garden fork has never been alive.

Where do wooden objects stand, having a domestic with DH. I said he’s over thinking it, a wooden table isn’t classed as dead as the tree has been smushed together, varnish added etc while he’s saying all wooden objects are classed as dead.

help???

I'd say you're both kind of right, both kind of wrong

The table itself was never alive as 'table' is the descriptor of the complete object (including its nails, its glue, its varnish etc.) But the table IS made primarily from dead wood

So I would say it has a dead component or is made from a dead form but is not I'm itself dead.

This probably falls more into philosophy than science 😂

So many mental images. Majestic herds of wild tables sweeping across the savannah, as great flocks of fluttering books mass in the skies above, and little families of wooden spoons scutter and scurry to the safety of their burrows to escape the thundering table-leg beats. A mother table and her two small side-tables lag behind the herd, while in the bushes, a lithe, hungry coffee-table readies itself to give chase with explosive speed.

But I'd argue "never alive" because bread doesn't breathe, procreate or poop.

It can go mouldy though so is it actually "alive" or are we back to component parts?

Ah right didn't realise the yeast dies

If I eat a banana is that alive? So then if I put it in a muffin I'm a banana killer?

Who will play Deadspoon in the movie?

This made me laugh so much!

Shotgun me!

@lavenderlou and some teachers say we don’t take our kid’s education seriously as parents 🤣😂🤣😂

I question concrete being never alive. It obviously has political awareness and a sense of time. So maybe some new, previously unknown life form....

(I would be as happy as I have ever been if there is someone on here who knows what the Horta was....Please, someone, make my day!)

Just to complicate things - while I’m convinced tables were never alive (I’ve never seen one breathe!), apparently CHAIRS can be alive:

@lavenderlou "I teach this on KS1 and you are overcomplicating it!"

Of course we are! I miss homework arguments over dinner. This is the next best thing.

Well, obviously the Horta are silicon-based lifeforms, their injuries can be treated by applying cement (hence the immortal line 'I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer'. )

I'd love to see the class reaction when showed a packet of dried yeast (clearly dormant but still alive).....

Seriously, though, if a wooden spoon was never alive, isn't KS1 misleading kids and missing the opportunity to teach the difference between organic and inorganic materials? Or has the word organic been TOTALLY hijacked for fancy marketing purposes to mean 'grown under specified conditions and therefore we are charging a lot more money for it'?

@weirdoboelady im having flash backs to inorganic, organic and physical chemistry lessons.

Im pretty sure they still so organic and inorganic materials at KS3, I can come back and update in 10 years when we reach that age 🤣🤣

Out of curiosity, what are the seven criteria? Because you listed “reproduce, uses oxygen, etc” when trees, all plants in fact, do not use oxygen, they use carbon dioxide. In addition numerous organisms are fully anaerobic as in they live with no air at all and oxygen can actually kill some.

I understand KS1 needing to keep things simple for young children, but why would teachers not delete the “uses oxygen” criterion from the curriculum than teach KS1 children something so plainly wrong for at least half the life forms on the planet?

Seriously, though, if a wooden spoon was never alive, isn't KS1 misleading kids and missing the opportunity to teach the difference between organic and inorganic materials?

There are vast numbers of 'organic' materials - in the proper chemical sense - which have never been alive. The term has its origins in 'vitalism' I suppose, and perhaps should have been changed when that concept was disproved nearly 2 centuries ago.

Where's the cut off?

Plastics are created from hydrocarbons that come from oil that was created from the decomposition of living things ages ago.

Is the plastic dead, because of its original derivation, or never alive, because it wasn't in that form?

All elements, therefore all chemicals, therefore all life, came originally from the nuclear fusion of stars, which are not living.... so are we not alive because of that derivation?

Where does life begin?!?

Suddenly this gets a bit existential for a KS1 question!! 😂

@MoxieFox

@WrylyAmused i know it started off as basic question then we took it too far 😂😂

Is the plastic dead, because of its original derivation, or never alive, because it wasn't in that form?

Never alive.
Consider a simpler 'organic' chemical, urea. It is commonly made by biochemical processes such as the breakdown of amino acids, but it can also be made from potassium cyanate and ammonium sulfate, inorganic 'never alive' chemicals. There's no difference whatever between a molecule made by either route.

No individual chemical is 'alive', regardless of how and from what it's formed; life (and therefore deadness) is a property of complex evolved systems.

I see! It sort of skips over the fact that plants make the oxygen they use.

Only before it was cooked, at which point the yeast becomes deceased. 😂

Really? What about such things as crude oil, for instance, or chalk? Are you telling me a 6-year-old would know the answer to those?

The following must all be done for a thing to be classified as living

Move
Respire
Sensitivity (haves senses)

Nutrition (eat)
Excrete
Reproduce
Grow

A wooden table does none of those