Whole Earth Curriculum WEC

Lesson 04 — What Living Things Need

Learners discover that every living thing needs four things to stay alive and healthy — food, water, air, and shelter — and that caring for living things means making sure they have them.

D06 P3: Intellectual & Cognitive Awareness D06.S2 45 minutes Draft

Objectives

Essential question

What do living things need to stay alive and healthy?

livingneedfoodwaterairshelter

Materials

Standard materials

Low-tech / no-cost

Enriched / lab & device

Works in different contexts

A plant with roots in soil in the center, surrounded by four labeled cards — food, water, air, and shelter — the four needs of every living thing
A plant with roots in soil in the center, surrounded by four labeled cards — food, water, air, and shelter — the four needs of every living thing

Lesson 4 — What Living Things Need

Summary

Learners discover the four things every living thing needs to stay alive and healthy: food, water, air, and shelter. They match each need to a plant, an animal, and a person, and learn that caring for living things means making sure they have what they need.

Objectives

  • Observe and describe what living things need to stay alive (food, water, air, and shelter). (D06.S2.01.01)

Connection

You get thirsty and you drink water. You get hungry and you eat. You breathe air all day without thinking about it, and you sleep somewhere warm and safe. Every living thing — a plant on a windowsill, a fish in a river, a camel in the desert, a person anywhere on Earth — needs the same four things to stay alive: food, water, air, and shelter.

Materials

  • Picture cards of living things and their needs (a plant, a puppy/dog, a chick/hen, a fish, and a person — each with food, water, air, and shelter)
  • Paper and crayons

Preparation

  • Prepare cards: a few living things, and cards showing food, water, air, and shelter for each.
  • Plan a simple way to act out each need (drinking, breathing, finding shelter).

Facilitator note

This lesson is written to the learner (“you”). Keep it gentle and concrete. Use the word “alive and healthy,” and let learners lead with their own lives. Be sensitive: a learner may live somewhere food, water, or a safe home is not always certain. Hold this without shame — say that everyone needs these four things, and that people everywhere work hard so that all living things can have them; that is why caring for each other and the Earth matters. Different living things meet the four needs differently (a fish “breathes” water’s air; a cactus finds water in dry places) — let that be wonder, not a quiz. Honor every body: act, point, or draw rather than speak if that is easier.

Procedure

  1. Gather (5 min). Think of a plant or an animal you know — a pet, a bird you have seen, a fish, a farm animal, or a wild creature near your home. What does it need every day so it can stay alive and healthy?
  2. The four needs (10 min). There are four things every living thing needs: food to grow, water to drink, air to breathe, and shelter — a safe place to rest and be protected. Take a big breath in. Feel the air. That is a need, right now.
  3. Match needs to living things (15 min). For each living thing — the plant, the puppy, the chick, the fish, the bird, and you — point to its food, its water, its air, and its shelter. A plant’s food comes from light and soil; a fish’s shelter is the water itself; a bird’s shelter is a nest. Act out one need for one living thing.
  4. Draw one living thing and its needs (10 min). Draw one living thing and the four things it needs around it.
  5. Close (5 min). Food, water, air, and shelter — every living thing, everywhere. When we care for living things, we make sure they have them.

Differentiation

  • Support: Focus on one living thing (the plant or the puppy) and match its four needs one at a time.
  • Support (non-speaking): Point to the need cards and to the living thing to show the match.
  • Support (blind/low-vision): Use real objects and touch or spoken description instead of picture cards — feel a leaf (a plant), water, air on the skin, and a soft “shelter” cloth, and match each need by touch and voice.
  • Extension: Compare two living things and name how their shelter (or food) is different.

Assessment

  • Formative (observation): Can the learner name (or point to) the four needs and match at least two of them to a living thing?
  • Artifact (portfolio): The “living thing and its needs” drawing.

Home connection

At home, help care for one living thing — a plant, a pet, or even a seed — by giving it one thing it needs (water, food, or a safe spot). Tell a grown-up which need you gave it.

Resources