3 Ideas for Teaching a Materials Science Unit
Teaching children about materials can lead to lots of fun lessons. Kids love performing experiments; and experiments on materials are some of the easiest to do in class. I have a complete unit of work in my store that has six different material lessons and can be found here.
If you want to give your kids a fun materials unit here are my favourite ideas:
How materials are made: Make your own paper
A great way to help children understand how different materials are made is to let them make some of their own. The best to start with is paper. This step by step tutorial walks you through how to make paper in your classroom and is lots of fun.
Complete lesson on how materials are made.
Recycling materials: turn unwanted things into useful objects
Encourage your kids to bring in old jars and tin cans. Turn them into plant pots, paint them and use as pencil jars and even use them as stilts! Set a project that encourages children to make something new and useful out of unwanted packaging is a great way to help children learn about recycling.
Complete lesson on recycling materials
Suitability of materials Test how suitable different materials are for purposes
This is such a fun experiment. Depending on the time of year you can choose which material will keep the snowman from melting, keep the tea warm or keep the spring drinks cool. wrap different materials around the ice, glass or mug and measure the changes in temperature. This tests help children to understand that different materials have different uses and are best suited to certain jobs.
Complete lesson on suitability of materials
These are just a few of the experiments you can introduce in a materials unit!
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