Everyday Materials

Finally covering the topic of "Materials" formally!

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.

Prophet Yunus (AS) & Making Mistakes

We read through the story of the Prophet Yunus (AS) from the books we have at home, talking about it as we went along. When we were done, I asked them to try and summarise the story back to me, so I could check their understanding.

As we're still working on our growth mindsets at the moment, I decided to use Yunus (AS)'s example as a way to highlight the moral of making mistakes then going on to fix them... Making a mistake isn't the end of the world. If we make a mistake, we should just try our best to fix it, however we can. Allah (SWT) is the only one who never makes mistakes and He is always there to listen to us when we need help. We can always make dua to Allah whenever we're in trouble or we need help... What was the mistake Yunus (AS) made? He left the people before Allah said he should stop delivering his message... How did he fix his mistake? He admitted he was wrong and asked Allah for forgiveness, by making dua.

Finally, we made a simple craft to make the story and moral more memorable... Because we can't draw the Prophet Yunus (AS), what would be a good picture to remind you of the story? A whale! 🐋 I decided to link this to their current work in Science on properties of materials by having them make a sun catcher. We didn't have any tissue paper to hand, so we improvised using tracing paper and felt tips! And, with help, this was an activity the toddler could join in with too.

I printed out the outline of a whale (to fit onto an A5 piece of paper) for them to trace onto tracing paper, which I'd pre-cut to A5 size. Then they chose a piece of A4 coloured card each and folded it in half. In the centre, they drew a circle by drawing around a bowl. While they were colouring their whales in using felt tips, I cut this circle out for them. Then, as if their card were like a book, they glued their tracing paper in between so the whale lined up with the cut out circle. Finally, I helped them cut around the edges so the card became a frame.

After I'd blutacked their sun catchers to their bedroom window, I asked them if they thought the tracing paper part of their sun catcher was transparent or opaque... M said transparent and F said opaque! Fortunately for me lol. So I explained the tracing paper is kind of in between: it blocks some light but lets some light through, so we can kind of see through it but not really - and the word for this is "translucent". Which part of the sun catcher was definitely opaque? They both said the card frame. And can you see anything in the window which is definitely transparent? They both said the glass of the window. I then pointed to each part in turn for them to describe as either transparent, translucent or opaque.

Later on, when we went downstairs and they were playing with their tracks, M asked if the box was transparent or translucent... Because it was see through but it wasn't clear, it was purple! After some talk, we decided that it was both - because the ridges on the lid were a bit cloudy to make them translucent while the rest of the box was transparent even though it was tinted a colour. 😄

Who was the Prophet Nuh (AS)?

We read through several different versions of the story of Prophet Nuh (AS) from the different books we have at home, and discussed it along the way:

When we were done, I asked the girls how do we know this story? How do we know this happened to Nuh (AS)? After some prompting and discussion, the girls came upon the answer that Allah talks about Nuh (AS) in the Quran. I took out the English translation to find an example of where Allah speaks about the Prophet Nuh (AS) - after looking through the contents of all the surahs, Surah Nuh seemed like a good one to read through! The English was a little difficult for them to understand all the words, but they understood enough to see it was part of the story we'd just read. I explained that the rest of Prophet Nuh (AS)'s story is in different surahs in the Quran, not all in one place like in the books we'd just looked at.

----------

We were gifted some small toy animals from my parents when the twins were younger, and because they used to fight a lot over the same toy at that age it meant we have pairs of animals to play with. 😂😂 So we used these to practise our 2x table in the context of counting the animals walking onto the ark, and sang the song, "The Animals Went In Two By Two" (Hurrah! Hurrah!) as we played with them. 😁😁

We also had a conversation about why two animals were chosen, why not more (because there would be no space!) and why not less (because you need two to make more!). And about how a male and female animal (including humans as well as other living things such as plants) are needed to make a baby. We didn't go into the details of reproduction! Just that you need a male and a female pair. M noted that it wouldn't make sense to have two male animals or two female animals going on the ark, they must have been one of each. Then I gave them a quick explanation of how by starting with just two animals, they were able to keep multiplying to get lots and lots more after some time - so even though Nuh (AS) couldn't take e.g. all the elephants with him, by taking just two elephants it made sure that all the elephants didn't disappear completely (or become extinct) after the flood.

----------

After a couple of days, we revisited the story and I asked the girls to summarise it for me - which they were able to do, MashaAllah. Then I told them they were going to have a go at making their own boat. What did Prophet Nuh (AS) use to build the ark? Wood! So we were going to use wooden lolly sticks to make ours as a mini version. We were also going to use PVA glue to stick our pieces together... but do they think Prophet Nuh (AS) used glue? No! He used a hammer and nails.., But we were just going to use glue since we're just making a model.

I gave them all the lolly sticks we had left in our craft supplies, some PVA glue and a couple of brushes to spread it with. Then told them to work together to make a boat and we could test it in the bathtub later, inshaAllah!

This is the first open ended creative building kind of task I'd set the girls, so I was interested to see what they'd do... It was great to see them discuss ideas, try something out, evaluate as they went along, make mistakes and change their plans... I tried my best not to give them any input from myself but used comments and questions such as, "What are you going to do next?", "Did that work the way you wanted it to?", "It keeps falling down. Why do you think that is?", "How could you make it stronger?", etc.

They began by making a "floor" by gluing a row of lolly sticks together. It kept sliding apart so one had the idea of putting a stick perpendicular underneath to keep them in place, which then became a stick glued on top perpendicular to the rest and they glued some more in the original line to complete the length. They were still sliding up and down a bit, so the girls decided to glue another perpendicular stick on top at the other end - then decided to just fill in in between and have another long row of sticks on top but perpendicular to the ones underneath. They were happy this gave a solid structure so now wanted to put some "walls" on their boat. First, they tried gluing a stick on its edge, which took several attempts to get to stand straight. Then they tried gluing another on top to make their wall taller, but no matter how they tried it wouldn't balance right. So they decided to keep the wall only one stick high and make an identical wall on the other side. Then they wanted to put a "roof" on the boat by gluing a stick on top of the two walls to join them together - but the weight of the stick on top made their walls fall down. So they came up with the idea of making their walls thicker and, because they wanted them identical, made both walls three lolly sticks wide. They only had two sticks left now so glued them both across as the roof.

I think if we had more sticks they would have happily kept going! I was really pleased to see them so engaged and determined even when it was tricky to get the sticks to stay in place and the structure didn't work out the way they wanted it to. 💕

We left their boat to dry overnight (why? because the glue was still wet so if we tried to put it in the bathtub now it would just fall apart!) then took it in the bathroom to test.

We talked about the story of Prophet Nuh (AS) again and the girls remembered that it wasn't raining at all when he built the ark, so there was no way Nuh (AS) could test it would work! He just had to trust in Allah, which he did. So we put their boat into the bathtub without any water.



Then the rain came (turn the shower on!) which didn't stop for 40 days and 40 nights! The girls were excited to see their little boat float up on the water as it rose (I purposefully aimed the showerhead to the side of the bath rather than on top of their boat!) and watched it spin and float this way and that. Was there any way of controlling which direction the boat was going? No, it was just being carried away with the water, just like the ark was with Nuh (AS) on it. We turned the shower off and watched the boat float for a while. What happened next in the story, after the rain stopped? The girls said the water all went away and then Nuh (AS) and all the animals could come off again. So we drained all the water away from the tub.

I asked if the girls wanted to do it again but this time with animals on their boat? Of course, the answer was yes! So we put a pair of animals on the boat and turned the shower on again. There was only room on their boat for one pair of animals - we talked some more about how large the ark must have been to fit in a pair of every animal, plus Nuh (AS) and all the believers! We tried squeezing another pair of animals on but their boat sunk and the other animals fell off... much to their amusement. 😂

Finally, we drained all the water away and retold how the ark stopped on top of a mountain for Nuh (AS) and the believers to finally disembark. By this point the glue on our boat was starting to get washed away and the sticks come apart, so we talked some more about the materials Nuh (AS) used to make the ark and what we could do next time if we wanted to make our lolly stick boat last longer!

Prophet Ibraheem (AS) - 07 - Building the Ka'bah

This is the last part of Prophet Ibraheem (AS)'s story I wanted to cover in the Reception year: how he and his son, Ismail (AS), built the ka'bah.

We read pages 40-44 together in the Migo & Ali book followed by pages 125-127 in the My First Quran Storybook, discussing the story as we went along.

I decided to do a few activities relating to this part of the story.

First, we reminded ourselves of which 3D solid the ka'bah is, i.e. a cube, and what the properties of a cube were: 6 square sides/faces all the same (thinking about other examples of cubes around the house, e.g. dice, boxes, to help). Then we talked about how we could build a model of the ka'bah using our Duplo blocks. Which blocks would we need? Which part did Prophet Ibraheem and Prophet Ismail build first? What shape would the base need to be? How tall should we make our model? How could we make the roof? I watched them work together to build their cube, prompting with questions along the way.

When they'd finished, I showed them some photos of the ka'bah and how its outside sometimes looks different, i.e. the design of the covering and how the cloth is sometimes lifted up, but in all the pictures the ka'bah is the same cube shape. I also pointed out where the black stone (hajar al-aswad) is situated, on the Eastern corner next to the door, and where the Station of Ibraheem (Maqam-e-Ibraheem) is, i.e. the stone Prophet Ibraheem (AS) stood on to build the upper walls. They remembered our recent Umrah trip and mashaAllah could link the experience with our lesson. 💕

I found all the images on Google, but you can download the pictures we used here.

I asked them how we could make our model look more like the real ka'bah and we talked about the covering being made from cloth... So we used a small black cloth to cover our model. (While I went upstairs to find some, I gave them the task of adding the Maqam-e-Ibraheem to their model; what colour/size/shape block could they use and where should it go?) After draping the black cloth on top they said it was still missing something: gold decorations! So we tied some gold ribbon across the top. We'll leave this model ka'bah for a few days for them (and their younger sister!) to include in their imaginative play - until they want to build something else. 😂

The other activity I did with them was to introduce the idea of 3D solids being built from 2D nets. I found an old cardboard box (food packaging is good for this) and asked them what shape it was: a cuboid/rectangular prism. Was it 3D? Yes! Then I showed them how to carefully open it out flat. Was it still 3D? No! How many faces does a cuboid have? Can you see the six different faces? Two smaller rectangles, two medium rectangles and two larger rectangles? I highlighted the pairs of faces in different colours and showed them how to fold it back into a cuboid again, then explained that we could do the same thing for a cube and this 2D pattern is called a "net".

I asked them how many faces a cube had and what 2D shape they were, so what might they expect the net of a cube to look like? Then I gave them a pre-drawn net of a cube each to cut out. I decided not to include the flaps at this age as I thought they might complicate things/be too fiddly for them. We talked about which lines they needed to cut across (not all of them!) then I highlighted the edges as a guide.

Once they'd cut the net out I helped them crease along the lines then asked them to try and fold it into a cube...

We compared our paper cubes with the cuboid from earlier... Which was stronger? Why? How could we make our cube stronger and how could we make it look like the ka'bah? After some discussion they decided they needed some black card. 💪 (This was our Science link and thinking about different materials 😀)

They stuck their paper templates (new vocab!) onto the black card and cut their net out again. I helped them fold the edges again, then we used sellotape to stick the sides together and decorated our models with strips of gold paper.

You can download our net of a cube here.

I was going to leave it there, but they wanted to put something in their folders... 😂 So I printed out a couple of the photos so they could summarise that part of the story and what they did!

You can download our worksheet as a template here.