THE TOMATO & THE SKY

IS A TOMATO ALIVE?

This week, a very interesting debate has taken place in our English classrooms. A question leading to more questions. Finally, we've decided to ask at home and each child has brought to class the different answers received. Some of them came out with more than four different opinions from their houses. So in the end, we don't have it clear at all, owing to several opposite points of view. What do you think? These are some of the opinions collected:
"In the plant it is alive, but on the plate it is dead"
"The tomato is alive when it's in the plant, when you cut it you kill it".
"Yes, they are alive, because they grow and change colour"
"Some tomatoes have seeds, those are alive, the rest are dead"
"They are alive when they belong to the plant, but they are not alive on their own, they are just a part of the plant"
"It depends on the size, the tomato cherries for example aren't alive. No way."

LIFE AND DEATH

A stone never dies, because it never changes. It doesn’t die, because it doesn’t live. Everything that changes, all that grows, dies. It sounds strange, but we die because we live.

How do we know if something is alive?

Is a star alive? Is a rock alive? Is grass alive? In reality, we know that something is alive when it needs to receive nutrition. A flower feeds from sunlight and rainwater. With water, air and light the flower grows. We also know that something is alive when it reproduces, in other words, when it creates other living beings. A stone doesn`t create other stones. But a daisy for example creates other daisies when it transports its pollen in the air, then other daisies are born on the field.

In our planet, the Earth, there are thousands and thousands of different lives, it is impossible to count them. It isn’t possible to count all the daisies, spiders, octopuses, humans, warms, parrots, tortoises, salmons, koalas…

We are human beings, and this planet is our planet. But it is also plants’ planet, trees’ planet, flowers’ planet, rats’ planet, snakes’ planet, lions’ planet, dogs’ planet, flies’ planet, etc. Rocks, stars, sand, gold, water…. don’t belong to the living being’s world, they belong to matter’s world, non organic matter’s world.