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Class 6 Science: Living Creatures: Exploring their Characteristics, 8 practice questions with answers

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These are 8 practice questions on the tenth chapter of the new NCERT Class 6 Science textbook, Curiosity, called Living Creatures: Exploring their Characteristics. Each has a short answer and the textbook page it comes from. They cover what makes something living, how plants respond, what seedlings need after sprouting, why farmers plough and wait for rain, signs that a plant is alive, where a mosquito's stages live, the frog's life cycle in weeks, and the pupa stage. For the variety of living things, see our Class 6 Diversity in the Living World guide. Try each question before you read the answer.

These questions are our own, drafted with AI help. Every fact was checked against the page it cites by a test script, but no practising teacher has reviewed them yet. If you find a mistake, please tell us.

What the chapter says you need

Facts from the NCERT textbook (Curiosity, Grade 6, Chapter 10, printed pages 183 to 205):

Living and non-living

Question 1. A robot vacuum cleaner moves around a room by itself and turns away when it bumps into a wall. Is it a living being? Use the chapter's list of features to decide.

Answer: no. Moving on its own is not enough: the chapter points out that a car moves too, but it is non-living. Living beings share all these features: they move, need food, grow, respire, excrete, respond to stimuli, reproduce and die. The robot does not eat, grow, breathe, get rid of waste or produce young ones of its own kind, so it is non-living. (Features of living beings, pages 184, 187 and 188.)

Question 2. A money plant kept on a windowsill slowly bends its stem towards the window. (a) Which characteristic of living beings does this show? (b) Which part of a plant grows towards light, and which way do the roots grow? (c) The pot is now turned round, so that the bent stem points away from the window. What will the new growth do over the next few days, and why?

Answer: (a) response to a stimulus (light), shown by movement; (b) the shoot grows towards light, the roots grow downwards; (c) it will bend back towards the window. (a) Light from one side is a stimulus, and the plant responds by growing towards it. (b) Shoots grow upwards and towards sunlight, while roots grow downwards. (c) Light is still coming from the window, so the plant keeps responding to it: the growing shoot turns and bends back towards the light. The new growth curves round to face the window again. (Responses of plants to stimuli, page 187; shoots grow towards light, page 194.)

Question 3. Moong seeds have sprouted. Some of the sprouts are planted in a pot of moist soil on a sunny windowsill; the rest are planted the same way in a pot kept inside a dark cupboard. (a) After a week, which pot has the healthier seedlings? (b) Why, when the seeds had sprouted without any light? (c) Name the conditions the seeds needed to sprout in the first place.

Answer: (a) the pot on the windowsill; (b) after germination a seedling needs sunlight to keep growing; (c) water and air (with soil, which holds air). (a) and (b) Most seeds do not need light to germinate, so the sprouting needed none. But once a seed has germinated, the seedling needs sunlight for its further growth, so the seedlings in the sunny pot grow well and those in the cupboard do not. (c) Seeds need water and air to germinate, and in soil they use the air held in the spaces between its particles. (Conditions for germination, and sunlight after germination, page 190.)

Question 4. A farmer ploughs a field to loosen the soil, waits for the first good rain, and then sows the seeds. Using the chapter, explain how (a) the rain and (b) the loosened soil help the seeds.

Answer: (a) water softens the seed coat so the embryo can grow; (b) loose soil has more spaces for air and lets the roots grow easily. (a) Seeds need water to germinate. The rain soaks into the soil, and the water lets each seed carry out the processes it needs; it softens the seed coat, the seed's outer covering, so that the tiny embryo inside can grow into a plant. (b) Seeds need air, and they use the air in the spaces between soil particles. Loosening the soil makes more of these spaces, and the spaces also let the young roots push through easily. (Water, air and soil for germination, page 190.)

Question 5. Mehul says the tulsi plant in his courtyard is not a living thing, because "it does not breathe and it does not get rid of anything". Use the chapter to give two facts that show he is wrong.

Answer: plants respire through tiny pores called stomata, and plants excrete excess water and minerals. (1) Plants respire: the surface of its leaves has tiny pores called stomata that let air in and out. (2) Plants excrete: they get rid of excess water and minerals, which can sometimes be seen as small droplets on leaves. So the tulsi does breathe in its own way and does get rid of wastes, like other living beings. It also grows, which the chapter lists among the features of living things. (Respiration and excretion in plants, page 186; features of living beings, pages 187 and 188.)

Life cycles

Question 6. (a) Of a mosquito's four life stages, which are spent in or on water, and which in the air? Where does the female lay her eggs? (b) In a place where no new mosquitoes are coming up from the water, some adults are still flying around. Why will they not keep the problem going for long?

Answer: (a) the egg, larva and pupa are in or on water, the adult in the air; the female lays her eggs on or near water; (b) an adult lives only about 10 to 15 days. (a) The female mosquito lays her eggs directly on or near water. The eggs hatch into larvae, which grow into pupae, and the larvae and pupae live in water. The adult that comes out of the pupa rests for a short time on the water's surface and then flies away. So three stages belong to the water and only the adult to the air. (b) According to the chapter, a grown mosquito lives only about 10 to 15 days. With no new adults coming up from the water, the ones already flying die off and are not replaced. (The mosquito's life cycle, pages 197 and 199.)

Question 7. The chapter's figure of a frog's life cycle gives these times: tadpole with a tail at day 7 to 10, tadpole with legs at 8 to 10 weeks, froglet at 12 weeks, adult frog at 14 weeks. (a) About how many weeks after the froglet stage does the adult appear? (b) About how many weeks does it take from the spawn (day 1) to the adult? (c) Roughly how many weeks pass between the tadpole with a tail and the tadpole with legs?

Answer: (a) about 2 weeks; (b) about 14 weeks; (c) about 7 to 9 weeks. (a) 14 − 12 = 2 weeks. (b) The figure shows the adult frog at 14 weeks, counting from the spawn on day 1. (c) Day 7 to 10 is about 1 week after the spawn (7 to 10 days, so between 1 and 1½ weeks), and legs come at 8 to 10 weeks. 8 − 1 = 7 and 10 − 1 = 9, so roughly 7 to 9 weeks pass in between. (Life cycle of a frog, page 201.)

Question 8. A child sees wriggling larvae in a bucket of rainwater and expects them to grow wings and fly straight out of the water. Using what the chapter says about how a mosquito's stages look, explain why the child is wrong.

Answer: a larva does not simply grow wings; it first changes into a pupa, and each stage looks very different from the next. The chapter says the appearance, body shape and structure of a mosquito change a great deal from stage to stage: the egg looks quite unlike the larva, the larva very unlike the pupa, and the pupa very unlike the adult. A larva does not just sprout wings. It must first become a pupa, and only then does the adult come out. (Tip the water out rather than waiting for this to happen.) (The mosquito's life cycle, page 199.)

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Sources

All opened and read on 2 November 2026. Page numbers are the printed page numbers of the textbook; printed page = PDF page + 182 for this chapter.

The facts are from the textbook pages above. The questions, answers and checks are our own. This guide is general information; follow your teacher and the textbook.