Here are some of the things we've done over the past few weeks:
1) Finding examples of everyday materials.
First, I asked them to explain what I meant by the "material" of something. They came up with "the thing it's made from". Then we brainstormed as many different materials as they could think of onto the whiteboard and when they were done I gave them a spider diagram of common materials to read through.
We went round each room in the house and tried to find 2-3 examples of objects made from each material on the spider diagram. As we went round, we talked about whether all the objects made from the same material were similar or not... And if the same object (e.g. a spoon) could be made from different materials - and why might that be? Why were certain materials chosen for some objects and not others? What made them good for that job?
You can download our worksheet here.
2) Learning new vocabulary to do with properties of materials.
We read through a couple of our science reference books on materials, then on a separate occasion went back to the pages relevant to properties to study them again in more detail: what do each of these words mean? Can you think of any other examples of objects with this property, that you could describe using this word? Can you find examples around the house?
The words we covered (inspired by the NC, but replacing e.g. the words "bendy" and "not bendy" because why not lol) were: hard, soft, rough, smooth, shiny, dull, flexible, inflexible, stretchy, stiff, transparent, opaque, waterproof, absorbent.
Then I gave them the following worksheet to complete by working together:
You can download the worksheet here.
3) Investigation into which material would be the best for a specific job.
I decided to go with the scenario of trying to keep a hot drink from cooling down so fast, as it was an easy one to link to the topic of materials and also introduce the idea of planning an experiment with making it a fair test in mind (the girls are now familiar with making predictions based on scientific knowledge, recording results and comparing them to their prediction, but in the past I've always just done the method myself).
So I wrote up a couple of sheets as an investigation template and we worked through them together.
I think this is also the first time I've introduced a diagram to them too! So I didn't go through it in much detail, just modelled the conventions as we spoke about how the experiment would be set up.
This was also good revision for their work on measuring, since we had to get the thermometers out again, and good practise for reading scales!
The idea of checking the temperature of the hot water for a mug without any material wrapped around it was important too, as it's the first time I've hinted at the need for a control. So this little experiment was really a way for me to slowly introduce and build up a lot of scientific conventions when designing investigations. 😀
Here's how we set everything up before pouring the hot water in. They were in charge of two mugs each and they had a thermometer each. They sensibly said they should wrap the mugs before pouring the water in, because otherwise it might make a mess! And I also told them it would make it fairer, because what if by the time they'd finished wrapping the first mug a few minutes had gone past before they even poured the water into the second mug?! We also spoke about how to measure the water before we started - i.e. they needed to make sure they were measuring the water and not the mug... What did they think I meant by that? They had to make sure the thermometer was touching the water and not leaning against the mug, because otherwise it would be measuring the temperature of the mug! Z was watching as we did it, and kept repeating this fact throughout: "You need to measure the water, don't touch the mug!" 😂
We used my phone as the timer, which is why there are no photos of the experiment in action. 🙈
I had to hold my tongue quite a bit as we did this activity... Lol. Reminding myself they're only 5 and the experiment doesn't need to perfectly fair, so long as they get the gist of things! Reflecting back on how they could improve their experiment as a conclusion can come later, inshaAllah. 😂
You can download the investigation templates here.
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