Aims | Outline | Curriculum Relevance | Background | Activities |
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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