Show students the difference between living and non-living things. Easy examples are household pets versus stuffed animal pets. Then have each of them draw or paint a star on a piece of cardboard. Have the students cut the stars out. Add glitter and other embellishments such as stickers and feathers to the stars. Add a wooden stick to make the star a magic wand. Then have kindergartners go around the room and try to magically change non-living things to living. Point out how it does not work. This will also help students understand the difference between reality and their imagination.
Gather a living animal and a stuffed animal. Some examples could be a rabbit, or a guinea pig, a mouse, or a hamster. Show students the differences between the two. Observe how the live animal walks and eats and the stuffed animal does not. Read books about these animals to further explain the difference between a non-living animal and a living animal. Next, put the living animal in a safe place and provide the animal with food and water. Do the same with the stuffed animal. After a few days, have the students observe how the living animal has eaten the food and the stuffed animal still has a full food bowl.
Take students on a field trip to a pet store, or have parents bring in living pets for a class show and tell. Have students pick out living and non-living items and take pictures of each one while they are doing so. Print out the pictures and have the students identify which of the pictures are of living or non-living things. Give each student a notebook and have them label one page as "Living" and the other as "Non-living." Give the students access to the pictures that were taken and others from magazines and show them how to glue the pictures onto the correct pages.
Take students on a field trip to a local park or just to the playground of the school. Have students go on a supervised nature walk, and allow them to observe and collect non-living items, while identifying those that are living. Watch this carefully as you do not necessarily want the kindergartners collecting fire ants, for example. For this reason and because living things do better if left in their natural habitat, emphasize the importance of just observing the living things. You could give them each a notebook and allow the students to draw the pictures of the living and non-living things as they see them. When back in the classroom, list those living and non-living things that the children found and discuss the differences.