Colorado Academic Standards Online
Use the options below to create customized views of the Colorado Academic Standards. For all standards resources, see the Office of Standards and Instructional Support.
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clear Content Area: Science - 2019 // Grade Level: Preschool // Standard Category: 2. Life Science
Science - 2019
Preschool, Standard 2. Life Science
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- 5. Students can use the full range of science and engineering practices to make sense of natural phenomena and solve problems that require understanding how individual organisms are configured and how these structures function to support life, growth, behavior and reproduction.
Preschool Learning and Development Expectation:
1. Recognize that living things have unique characteristics and basic needs that can be observed and studied.
By the end of the preschool experience (approximately 60 months/5 years old) students may:
- Observe, describe and discuss living things.
- Observe similarities and differences in the needs of living things.
- Observe and describe how natural habitats provide for the basic needs of plants and animals with respect to shelter, food, water, air and light.
- Ask and pursue questions through simple investigations and observations of living things.
- Collect, describe, and record information about living things through discussion, drawings, graphs, technology and charts.
- Identify differences between living and nonliving things.
Examples of High-Quality Teaching and Learning Experiences:
Supportive Teaching Practices/Adults May:
- Provide opportunities for children to engage with live animals and plants along with toy/stuffed animals and plans and photographs/pictures throughout the classroom.
- Read books about living and nonliving things, inquire about how we know if something is living or not.
- Display worm farms, bird feeders, caterpillar/butterfly habitat, fish tank for observation.
- Watching the fish, observe and discuss the movement of the gills, explaining this is how fish breathe under water.
- Provide opportunities for children to use different materials (technology, journals, drawings, etc.) to observe living things.
Examples of Learning/Children May:
- Match photographs of different habitats to the things that occupy them (i.e., worms live in the ground; fish live in water).
- Sequence a series of photographs/pictures of a plant’s growth.
- Sequence a series of photographs/pictures of the life cycle of a butterfly from caterpillar to chrysalis/cocoon to butterfly.
- Document the life cycle of living thing.
- Recognize that living things require water, air, food.
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- 6. Students can use the full range of science and engineering practices to make sense of natural phenomena and solve problems that require understanding how living systems interact with the biotic and abiotic environment.
Preschool Learning and Development Expectation:
2. Recognize that living things develop in predictable patterns.
By the end of the preschool experience (approximately 60 months/5 years old) students may:
- Identify the common needs such as food, air and water of familiar living things.
- Predict, explain and infer patterns based on observations and representations of living things, their needs and life cycles.
- Observe and document changes in living things over time using different modalities such as drawing, dramatization, describing or using technology.
- Recognize that plants and animals grow and change.
Examples of High-Quality Teaching and Learning Experiences:
Supportive Teaching Practices/Adults May:
- Provide opportunities for observation and investigation of the characteristics of animals and plants over time.
- Take nature walks.
- Encourage children to identify similarities and differences between living things and document what each need to survive.
- Provide opportunities for children to explore available outdoor habitats.
- Provide opportunities for children to help feed the classroom pet, water the plants, etc.
Examples of Learning/Children May:
- Identify and describe through a variety of modalities the changes in living things overtime (e.g., bears hibernate when it is cold outside).
- Investigate living things by caring for animals and plants in the classroom.
- Document the human life cycle - babies grow into children, children grow to adults, adults get older.
Need Help? Submit questions or requests for assistance to bruno_j@cde.state.co.us

