🎯 Learning outcomes
- List the characteristics shared by all living things
- Explain why some features (movement, growth) alone do not decide if something is living
- Classify living things into plants and animals and recognise micro-organisms
Before you start: Sorting living and non-living things.
📖 Explanation
All living things share some features: they need food (energy), respire (breathe), grow, respond to changes around them, reproduce, get rid of wastes, and have a fixed life span.
No single feature is enough. Clouds grow and a crystal of salt can grow in a solution, but they are not alive. A seed in a packet looks lifeless, yet it is alive: given water and warmth it grows.
Living things are mainly plants and animals. There are also living things too small to see without a microscope, called micro-organisms: some, like the bacteria in curd, are useful; others cause diseases.
Curd is made when bacteria added from a little old curd grow in warm milk. This shows tiny living things at work in every Indian kitchen.
✗ A seed is non-living because it does not move, eat or breathe visibly
✓ A seed is alive but resting; it respires slowly and grows into a plant when it gets water, air and warmth.
🧪 Try this activity
Put dry rajma seeds in one cup and soaked seeds on wet cotton in another. Observe for five days and explain which shows signs of life and why.
✍️ Question bank with answers
Tap an option to check multiple-choice answers. Open “Answer” or “Marking points” for the others.
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Which is NOT a feature of all living things?
Answer
D. they can walk
Plants do not walk but are living.
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Touch-me-not (mimosa) leaves fold when touched. This shows that plants
Answer
A. respond to changes
Responding to a touch is a sign of life.
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Bacteria in curd are
Answer
D. living micro-organisms
They grow and multiply in milk.
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Name the process by which living things get energy from food.
Answer
respiration
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Give one example of a useful micro-organism.
Answer
bacteria that make curd, or yeast for dough
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Is a dry seed living or non-living? Give a reason.
Marking points
- Living
- It grows into a plant when it gets water, air and warmth
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A child says 'fire is living because it eats wood, grows, needs air and moves'. Explain why fire is non-living.
Marking points
- Fire does not reproduce young like itself
- It has no cells, does not respond like living things and does not have a life cycle
- Some features alone do not make something alive
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Why do farmers store seeds in dry containers?
Answer
- Water would make seeds start growing
- Dry seeds stay resting until sowing
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Make a table with features (eat, breathe, grow, reproduce) and tick them for a cow, a mango tree and a stone.
Answer
- Cow and tree: all ticked
- Stone: none ticked
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