Scientific Exploration in Year 1

This term, Year 1 children have been learning about Materials and their properties. There have been interesting discussions in class about why objects are made of certain materials and how the properties help in determining that. For example, why are clothes made out of fabric and not wood, metal or stone? Imagine if the walls and doors of a house or building were made out of fabric? What would that be like?

The children later on explored the properties Transparent and Opaque and delved deeper to look into curtains and windows. Children discussed whether curtains should be made of opaque or transparent materials and why. When it was established that they should be made of opaque materials, the children then went on to use different readily available materials to make curtains. They investigated which material is most suitable to make curtains and why? The children were quite excited to collect materials such as fabric, paper, tissue, stones and sticks to try to make curtains out of them. They designed their curtains and made them out of the various materials.

The findings from this investigation and exploration were:

Princess: Tissue was easy to use because it is soft

Gabriel: Fabric was easy to use because it is soft.

Ruby: Rocks are hard to make because they are hard to use to make curtains