Plants

• A science lesson on plants and their life cycles can be fun and relatively easy. A packet of pea seeds (or another kind of garden seed), a plastic tray, some potting soil and some water will get the whole thing started. Wetting the soil, planting the seeds, covering the tray and waiting are the hands-on part of the lesson. While waiting for seed germination the lesson can turn to a review of plants' life cycles and general research on plants and their biology. Once the seeds germinate, providing light and otherwise caring for the young plants and monitoring their growth and development can yield many insights into plant life.
  
  

Animals

• Science lessons on animals can begin with caring for a pet. The pet might be a fish, a hamster, a dog or a cat. Identifying and discussing the needs that different kinds of animals have can help introduce animal biology. Comparing and contrasting the needs of animals with those of plants gives yet another perspective.
  
  Plants manufacture their own food through the process of photosynthesis and use the energy through respiration. While plants carry out both photosynthesis and respiration, with some unusual exceptions, animals are incapable of photosynthesis. Animals generally must consume their food from an outside source.
  
  

Cells

• There are fundamental differences between plants and animals at the cellular level. One key difference is that plant cells have a cell wall and animal cells do not. Students in middle grades and even younger can understand and appreciate these concepts if the explanations are clear and well illustrated. There are web-based resources for teaching this material; The Florida State University's Molecular Expressions is an excellent one. If a microscope and some prepared slides are available, a hands-on observation of these features can help drive home the lesson.
  
  

Fungi

• Among the world of living things, fungi are unique. They are not plants, and they are not animals. A mushroom is perhaps what comes to mind when considering the group, although the fungal kingdom includes many forms that do not produce such a mushroom structure.
  
  A safe and effective way to begin the study of fungi close up is to work with the common mushroom, or the so-called button mushroom. Mushrooms are relatively inexpensive and there is no question of their safety. Selecting a bunch that has most of its stalks included will help give the sense of a whole mushroom that might grow in the wild.
  
  Many mushrooms, including the common button mushrooms, have structures called gills that produce microscopic spores. The individual spores may be too small to be observed without magnification, but the mushroom cap leaves a pattern, called a spore print, of tens of thousands or even millions of spores when left overnight on a piece of white paper. People who study mushrooms use spore print color to help in identifying particular species of mushrooms.
  
  

Biodiversity

• Biodiversity -- the overall variety of living things in a given area -- is something teachers and students can easily explore at many levels. An outdoor area that has some lawn and perhaps some trees and shrubs presents a contrast of habitats. Here students can compare different levels of biodiversity. A simple observation and tally of how many different kinds of living things occur in each setting can be very instructive. It isn't necessary to make definitive identifications of species; just the recognition of one kind being different from another is sufficient.