The Blue Dragon
Programme 7: Lots of Stuff!
This programme aims to develop children's understanding of materials by
developing their ideas about classification and the properties of a range of everyday
materials.
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In this programme, the characters are walking through a rainforest when a storm
begins and they decide they need to take shelter. They come across a tree house
but there are problems getting up to it. The characters find a box of 'stuff'
that provides some possible solutions. They sort through the box and classify the
items according to properties of materials, such as soft, stretchy, bendy and strong.
They use a rope to help them climb up into the tree house, but the roof leaks and
the windows have no glass or curtains. They use their box of stuff to solve their
problem and take shelter until they are disturbed by a monkey, to whom the tree
house belongs.
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The programme explores:
- classifying different materials according to their properties.
- using different materials to do different things.
There are many curriculum links that can be made, for example:
- Art – wall collage of a rainforest, and animals that live in this habitat.
- English – create a glossary of terms or a dictionary about materials and their different properties.
- Geography – research rainforests and consider similarities and differences to where the children live.
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Materials can be classified according to their properties. For example, metal is
hard, cold to touch, shiny and has a ringing tone when struck. Wood on the other
hand is warm to touch, hard and opaque, whilst plastic can be hard, soft, flexible
or rigid and opaque or transparent. In everyday life many people use the word material
to refer to fabric, whereas in science, material refers to many different things,
including fabrics. We use different materials to do certain jobs because of their
properties.
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Play a game of 'I SPY' around the classroom, for example:
'I spy with my little eye a metal beginning with …'
At a height on the wall that the children can reach, create a set of headings such
as waterproof, strong, flexible, soft and hard, with pieces of Velcro stuck underneath.
Place a box labelled 'STUFF' just like the box in the programme. Each material
in the box should have a piece of Velcro on the back so that children can sort the
materials and fix them in the appropriate place on the Velcro on the wall. If children
have been working on 'sets', then hoops could be placed, some overlapping
on the display.
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