Earth & Space - Materials from Earth - Introducing materials - G1
This is the Teacher's Guide for this targetThis is the Teacher's Guide for this targetTeacher's Guide

ES-A2.2

  2. The children could further investigate the properties of some materials to include things like stretching, dissolving (why don’t we make shoes out of chewing gum?), melting, crumbling, crumpling etc.

    Worksheet A4a (G) has a list of simple properties. The children can write or draw some things which have those properties e.g. for bendy they could draw a rubber.
     

  3. If you are linking the story of the Three Little Pigs into this part of the lesson you can do a little demonstration as below :-
Activity

Place two piles of books about 25 cm apart and rest some long art straws across the gap. Let a child try to push down on the straws to break them.

Next put some long twigs from the garden across the gap. The children will find that these are stronger and may need a foot pushing down to break through.

Then try putting a brick across the gap - adjust the book piles if necessary- and let the children try to push down on it (carefully of course to make sure they don’t push it sideways and drop it onto fingers or feet!).

Now they should be able to tell you which is the strongest!
Ask the children to draw the houses of the three pigs and to draw what happened when the wolf came along. They can use worksheet A4b (G).

Straw houses have moved on since the days of the 3 wee pigs!

Straws in the Wind

You may want to keep this information 'til P3U1L1 where materials can change their character when you do things to them .......

Straw houses have been given a pretty bad reputation over time, mostly because of one foolish little pig and that BIG BAD WOLF.....

This is the story of how one little piggy in Nevada, USA built himself a WOLF-PROOF Straw House.

MATURE STUDENTS?

One day a teacher was reading the story of the Three Little Pigs to her class. She came to the part of the story where the first pig was trying to accumulate the building materials for his home. She read, "...And so the pig went up to the man with the wheelbarrow full of straw and said, "Pardon me sir, but may I have some of that straw to build my house?'" The teacher paused then asked the class, "And what do you think that man said?" One little boy raised his hand and said, "I think he said 'H*ly %$#@! A talking pig!'" The teacher was unable to teach for the next 10 minutes.