What every living thing needs, for the youngest scientists: study cards a grown-up can read aloud, the tricky ones, a practice quiz at three levels — Foundation, On-Level, and Challenge — and a lab where you sort plant needs from animal needs, label a plant and what it needs, put a seed in order to a flower, and find the four things a rabbit's home gives her. Work here, or print it and use a crayon — both count.
One short list. Food, water, air, a place to live. Nothing alive can skip any of it.
Everything alive needs the same four things: food, water, air and a place to live. What changes is HOW each one gets them — a plant makes its own food, an animal has to go find it.
Two things people get wrong
⚠️People often think…
Watering a plant is how you feed it.
Water is one ingredient, not the food. The plant makes its own food in its leaves out of light, water and air together. No light means no food, however much you water it.
Water is an ingredient. Light makes the food.
⚠️People often think…
Fish do not need air, because they live under water.
They need it just as much. There is air mixed into the water, and gills are the tool for pulling it out. Everything alive needs air — they just get it a different way.
Air is in the water too. Gills get it out.
Who needs what
1Watch one
A plant in a dark closet gets water every day. Will it live?
Go down the list: food, water, air, a place.
Water — yes. Air — yes. A place — yes.
Food — the plant has to MAKE it, and making it takes light.
No light means no food. It will not live. ✓
2Do one with me
Fill in who gets what, and how.
A plant gets its food by
A fish gets its air with its
Soil holds the roots and holds the
💬One sentence, then you move on
Why is watering a plant not the same as feeding it?
3Try one
You test two plants. To be fair, how many things do you change?
I want a hint first
If you change the water AND the light, and one plant dies, which one did it? You cannot tell.
Where this goes
Where this lives
Keeping a pet alive, keeping a plant on the windowsill alive, knowing why the class fish tank has a bubbler in it.
What this feeds
Next unit is weather and seasons — the outside that all of this has to survive.
Name one living thing you take care of, and what it needs.
One card at a time — tap “Show me” to check yourself, then Next. Start at Foundation; when those feel easy, climb.
Helpful Hints
🪜 The four needs — the ladder
Every living thing needs food → and water → and air → and a place to live. A plant makes its own food out of sunlight, water and air, so it can stay in one spot → an animal cannot make food, so it goes and finds some → the place that hands a living thing all four is called its habitat.
Food, water, air, a place — then ask who makes it and who finds it.
🤝 The whole idea
Everything alive needs the same short list. What changes is how each living thing gets it.
Same needs, different ways.
⚠️ Tricky ones
Watering a plant is NOT feeding it. The plant makes its own food with light, water and air.
Soil is not the plant’s food. It holds the roots and holds the water.
Fish need air too — they take it out of the water with their gills.
Water, air, sunlight and soil are NOT living. They are still needed by everything that is.
A fair test changes only ONE thing. Same cup, same soil, same window — only the water is different.
🌿 Who needs what — the chart
The need
A plant
An animal
food
makes its own in its leaves
goes and finds it
water
drinks it through its roots
drinks from a pond, a puddle, a bowl
air
takes it in through tiny holes in its leaves
breathes it, or takes it from the water with gills
sunlight
must have it — that is how it makes food
does not make food with it, but needs the warmth
a place to live
a spot of ground with room to grow
a nest, a den, a shell — and room to move
Read down the first column: that is the list nothing alive can skip.
🎯 How the test will ask
A picture of four things — “which one is living?” (it grows, eats and drinks).
A drawing of a plant with arrows — “label the roots, stem, leaf, flower.”
Pictures of a seed, a sprout and a flower — “put them in order.”
A picture of an animal’s home — “what does this place give it?” (food, water, shelter, room).
Two plants side by side — “what was different, and why did one die?”
✅ Can you…
Name the four things every living thing needs?
Tell living from not living, and say how you know?
Say what a plant does that an animal cannot?
Point to the roots, the stem, a leaf and the flower?
Name the four things a habitat gives an animal?
Pick your level
Look back at anything you missed — the hint that appeared is exactly what to reread tonight.
How sure did you feel?
Lab
Work like a scientist: label the diagrams, turn the table into a graph, then write a claim with evidence and reasoning. Every lab checks itself on the spot, and hints are free.
Your practice never leaves this device. There is no account and no sign-in. Your work is saved in this browser only, and you can erase it whenever you want.
Your practice record — saved on this device
This is your record of the module on screen — it stays here and goes nowhere. Independent means you got it right on the first tap; supported means you got it after the explain-and-retry, or marked ‘I had it’ on a revealed answer. Both count, and neither is a grade. If your teacher asks, copy the row or show them this screen.
Date
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Topic
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Level
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Independent
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Supported
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Hints used
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Cards studied
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Lab
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Traps met
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Explained in own words
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Confidence
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The answer key is for a teacher: it prints only from here, for the unit on screen. Print the study packet prints the study pages and a blank quiz — never the answers.