This half term, we are focusing on different materials. We started off by studying different materials and discussing some of their properties. We learnt about a range of different materials, such as metal, rubber, plastic, fabric and wood. We will be discovering more about different materials, their properties and their suitability over the next few weeks! 

This week, we concentrated on differentiating between objects and the materials that they are made from. We discussed the different materials again and then thought about different objects that are made from these materials. We went around the classroom identifying different objects and the materials that they are made from. 

Following on from identifying objects and their materials, this lesson we focused on describing what the materials were like using super vocabulary like 'opaque', 'transparent', 'absorbent', 'stretchy' and 'rough' to name a few! We are becoming confident discussing different objects and the materials they are made from and are able to make some predictions as part of our investigations. 

We have extended our knowledge of materials and their properties this week by focusing on their suitability for certain tasks. We discussed what material would need to be used for absorbing water and why, we also talked about materials for coat hangers and why some materials would not work. Finally, we discussed the properties required for a window and investigated different materials and their suitability, explaining the understanding and reasoning behind our thoughts. 

This lesson, we have been learning more about changing shapes of materials and thinking about how this links to their properties. We started by using play dough to investigate different changes we can make to a material. Then, we made predictions about whether different materials would bend, stretch, twist or fold and then investigated this as part of an experiment.