First Grade Science

Collecting and Examining Life

Science Content

Cluster 1: Living Things

• There are many criteria that distinguish living things from non-living things.
• Living things have needs. They can only survive in environments where their needs can be met.
• Many different kinds of living things can share an environment.
• Living things can be classified into different groups.
• Animals, plants, and fungi are living things.

Cluster 2: Animals

• Animals move, breathe, eat, and sense their environment.
• Animals have body parts to help them move, breathe eat, and sense their environment.
• Different animals have different body parts related to these functions.

Cluster 3:  Plants

• Plants have many parts that work together to help them grow and make new plants.
• Leaves use sunlight to make food for the plant.
• Fruits contain the seeds of a plant.
• Seeds grow into new plants. They disperse from their parent plant in various ways.
• Roots transport water and minerals from the soil to the upper plant.
• Stems support a plant and move nutrients and water up and down the plant.
• Flowers develop into fruits.

Cluster 4:  Fungi

• Fungi live directly on their food source.
• Fungi grow best in warm, moist environments. They do not need light.
• Fungi play an important part in nature as decomposers.

Motion

Science Content

Cluster 1: Describing Motion

• Motion is movement.
• Motion always follows a path.
• Motion has speed, which is related to how far something goes (distance) and how long it takes (time).
• You can describe an object’s motion by how long it takes, how far the object travels, how fast the object moves, and what path it follows.

Cluster 2: Changing Motion

• The way to change how something moves is to give it a push or a pull.
• Starting, speeding up, slowing down, and changing direction all represent changes in motion.
• There are many sources of pushes and pulls.
• There are different sizes of pushes and pulls. Bigger pushes and pulls (forces) cause bigger changes in motion than smaller forces do.
• Collisions cause pushes that may change the motion of all the colliding objects.

Cluster 3:  Friction and Gravity

• Friction is a force (a pull) that slows down moving objects.
• If there is a lot of friction between surfaces, a moving object slows down quickly. If there is not much friction between surfaces, a moving object slows down more gradually.
• OnEarth, gravity is a force that pulls everything down all the time.

Weather

Science Content

Cluster 1: Weather Conditions

• The main parts of weather are temperature, sunlight, wind, clouds, and moisture.
• Meteorologists—people who study weather—use symbols and descriptive terms to communicate about weather.
• Weather is measurable.
• Thermometers measure temperature.
• Sunlight both illuminates and warms.

Cluster 2:  Weather Patterns

• A weather pattern is weather that repeats or follows an order.
• Simple graphs can help scientists communicate their observations.
• Data is a fact about something observed.

Cluster 3:  Water

• Understanding how water changes—from liquid to a vapor or a solid—is essential to understanding weather.
• Three basic cloud shapes are cumulus, cirrus, and stratus.
• Water can be a part of the air, an invisible gas called water vapor.
• Water can condense out of the air onto cold surfaces, a phenomenon called dew.
• Frost is water that comes out of the air and forms as ice crystals.
• Snowflakes form in six-sided or six pointed patterns.

Cluster 4:  Air and Wind

• Air is all around us.
• Wind is moving air.
• Scientists and meteorologists use various tools to measure wind’s strength, speed, and direction.