Before Christmas DJ and I finished a third chapter in our science curriculum, Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding. This lesson, from the life sciences segment is titled “Distinguishing Living or Biological, Natural Earth, and Human-Made Things.”

Although this is similar to a Living vs NonLiving exercise DJ did back in 2014, it goes a step farther. First it introduces the term biological that includes all things that are living, were once living or are from living things. When asked to find something in the yard for this category, DJ chose a leaf and a stick. The lesson then introduces natural earth items, represented here by a pile of sand and a small rock. Finally, the lesson distinguishes Human-Made things into their own category. DJ chose a sand sifter and a toy construction truck. 

The day after we started this lesson, DJ participated in Homeschool Day at the Zoo where he found a lot of living examples. 

When we revisited the lesson again, DJ chose a houseplant, an orange and himself for the biological category. The lesson made a fascinating point about food. While some of our modern day food is so highly processed it might be tempting to put it in Human-Made, our food must be from living things in order to provide nourishment. 

For the Natural Earth category, this time DJ chose rocks, water and a representation of iron ore from the Minecraft game. I will be forever grateful for that video game providing DJ’s first experience with coal, iron, gold and other metals & minerals as raw ore to be mined from the earth instead of human crafted items like iron bars, gold coins or diamond jewelry. Because of that game, the natural earth category really resonated with DJ. 

For Human-Made, DJ chose a coin, paper instructions and a plastic Lego mini-figure. From the beginning of the lesson, DJ easily distinguished human made items but the text didn’t stop there. DJ learned in this lesson that all Human-Made items come from raw materials that were once either biological or natural earth. The coin started as metal ore and the paper comes from trees. So no matter how much we change an item, we don’t actually create anything but must start with elements already existing in our world. 

To finish the lesson, I asked DJ to define each of the categories. I wrote his words for him and then he drew pictures. He found biological the easiest to define. He drew a person and a tree. But sadly I cannot remember what the blue item on the tree was supposed to be. A bird, maybe?

DJ struggled with defining natural earth. He wanted to just say it’s rough or hard. It came easier to define was natural earth is not. When it came time to draw, DJ drew a diamond ore cube, again from Minecraft. 

Lastly, as much as DJ could point out examples of human-made items, he could not find the words to explain what they are. It took a lot of prompting to get even two descriptive phrases. He made up for it in the drawing though. I just love his 5yo version of a car!  And the item in the center is a coin. 

So we’re still in the early phases of using BFSU for science but I’m truly loving it. I’m learning as much as DJ is and we’re both having fun with it. And this is still just pre-kindergarten!