What's Alive
About a week ago we gathered some things in a paper bag and had to classify them as never alive, was alive, now dead, a product of a living thing, or is currently alive, and after an indefinite time period later we would reopen our bags to see what the major differences were.  For the non-living things in our bag, we all agreed in saying they were never alive and a product of a living thing outside of the nails and pebbles--we stated they were both never alive.  Other items in our bag included a moth, water, a cotton ball. toothpick, straw, an ant, another unidentified bug, a clover flower, and a weed.  We were all on the same page in classify if they were never alive, were alive, now dead, product of a living thing(s), or alive now.  A couple of items we had discussions about were the corn, kidney beans, and radish seeds.  We split about 50/50 saying they were alive but now dead and alive now.  We all agreed they were a product of a living thing before they were picked though.  We decided to wait until we revealed if they were living now or if they were once alive.  To our amazement, all three items started sprouting!  This answered our question whether they were alive or not.  As basic as this assignment was, it was really cool to see what the effects were when you wrapped certain seeds/kernels/beans in a waterlogged paper towel and kept them in direct sunlight to see if they would sprout, and they did.  I'm probably more impressed about this then I should be, but I haven't done an experiment along the lines of this since I was enrolled in a summer science camp, so it had been a while.  Nevertheless, it was magnificent to see the then and now. 

This was the day we revealed what the waterlogged paper towel exposed to sunlight had to offer us.