This week we are continuing to puzzle about what is alive and how can we tell. We started by checking our pulses again -you can never be too careful, it seems. Most of the class seemed to be alive although a couple needed a second opinion. A lot of children had shown the journals to family members since last week, so they were really tuned in to the topic. Bethany had been inspired to bring in some exciting objects for the all of us to investigate. The children passed them round and tried to figure them out.

Some of these were very unusual objects indeed and there were oohs and ahhs as she revealed them one by one and they were passed carefully around. Maybe Bethany will reveal what they are on the class journal. Meanwhile I won’t spoil the mystery. We discussed why the rest of the class had chosen the objects that they collected in playground the previous week:

I thought it was a good texture. I was interested to see if I would be able to paint it -Sarah

I picked it because it was an unusual leaf and it had black spots on it. -Rachel

My leaf had lots of bumps on it. -William

I thought that the things on the end of it were nuts. It had a hundred little seeds on each pod. -Courtenay

Beth picked a leaf because she thought it was alive. Joseph picked a leaf. It was completely green. Emily got grass -she thought it was alive.

It was interesting that a lot of them were thinking as much about the aesthetic appeal of the object as about the idea of whether it was alive or not. I asked what they had done with the objects and they said that they had thrown them in the bin because they knew that they would die. I showed them one of the objects that I had picked up and brought into the house last week. Some of the class took these photos using the instant camera. I changed the background to make the object stand out more.

I told the children about another live thing that  I discovered last week when I was outside -the one that steamed up my camera lens.

I got them to think about whether or not she was alive. They came up with some interesting answers and deductions.

Some groups thought:

Yes, because it moos, eats, has a heart that pulses and movement and it can breathe. Because it’s walking and has a label in its ears -you take that out when you take it in to the factory or if it dies.

Another group thought:

Not necessarily. The picture was taken last week and she could have died in between.

In fact the second group was right. The cow had complications with her last calf and it died earlier this year and because she can’t have more calves, last week was her last week. Full stop. The farmer brought her to the “factory”. One of the children had a parent who works in a slaughter house and the children revealed a large amount of farming expertise in their responses to this story. It is obvious that we need to make more time to explore their considerable experience as part of our project because they were talking about life expectancy of beef and dairy cattle and knew about sheep as well. Tip of the iceberg, I think for this strand of work as it relates so closely to our exploration of life cycles.

I showed the children some tiny tiny snails that had got caught up in the fur of another animal this very day and brought into the house. They were totey and moving around in the vessel I had carefully placed them in. I couldn’t photograph them with the built in camera as they were so small. This led us to thinking about parts of our own bodies that were like the snail’s shell and grew with us as we grew. The children thought of bones, teeth and I suggested fingernails. We experimented with drawing the top part of our thumbs using different media -oil pastel, chalk on black paper, drawing pencils and biros. It took me the whole time to draw my thumb with a pencil!

The whole session was plagued by bad sound and long delays so it was amazing that we covered so much ground despite a trying connection that made video dodgy, all text useless and my voice squeaky. It’s been a long time since we have had so much interference from the technology. I hope it’s just a blip. We take it for granted when things go well. Today was a reminder that we can’t get complacent.