Where Did It Come From? Natural and Made Materials

We are learning to sort materials into natural and made, and to explain where each one starts out.

Before you startAbout 55 minutes · what success looks like · notes for the helper

About 55 minutes. It's fine to stop after the Quick Check and come back another day: the lesson opens where you left it, at the Quick Check.

You'll know you've got it when

I can name fibres, metals, glass, plastics and wood as families of materials and give an example of each
I can explain the difference between a natural material and a made material
I can trace a material back to where it started, decide if it is natural or made, and give my reason

For the helperhow to sit beside this lesson, and what this step is for

This step: Spark

Start with the question at the top and chat about it. There is no wrong answer here: it gets your learner thinking about what they already know.

Getting ready: A dozen or so household objects on the table (a wool sock, a cotton tea towel, a polyester shirt, a metal spoon, a piece of foil, a wooden peg, a plastic bottle) and one clean, unbroken glass jar that you carry and hold yourself. Clothing tags are handy too, because they print the fibre. About 55 minutes in all, which is more than one comfortable sitting at this age; many families stop after the check and come back to the task the next day.
What understanding sounds like: Listen for your child asking 'where did this start?' and answering with a source: a sheep, a plant, sand, rock dug from the ground, oil. A child who can tell the story of a material, even roughly, has the idea, whether or not every sort lands in the right pile.
A likely mix-up, and something that helps: Two mix-ups are common: that natural means better or safer and made means fake, and that something is natural because it started out as natural stuff, like glass from sand or plastic from oil. You might ask, 'Did nature make this jar, or did people change the sand into something new?' It also helps to say out loud that a wooden spoon is still natural wood even though a person carved it.
If it comes easily: For a child who finds this easy, you might ask which pile a paper bag belongs in, and why that one is a good argument (paper starts as wood, but people change it a lot). There is no tidy answer, and the reasoning is the point.
If it's a struggle: If it is a struggle, one way is to work with only four objects, such as the wool sock, the wooden peg, the plastic bottle and the glass jar, and to ask one question about each: 'What was this before people got hold of it?' The words natural, made and raw material carry this lesson, so if they are new, or new in English, holding up the sock and the bottle while saying each word helps. If your child would rather not today, reading one clothing tag together is a fine start.

Step 1 of 6 · Spark

Lesson 1 of 5 · Made for the Job: Natural and Made Materials

The jar nobody grew

For the helper

Start with the question at the top and chat about it. There is no wrong answer here: it gets your learner thinking about what they already know.

Ask your helper to put a clean glass jar on the table. Glass is always carried by a grown-up, and today it is only ever looked at and held gently, never dropped. Look through it. Tap it with a fingernail. Now ask a strange question: where did this jar come from, before it was a jar? Nobody dug a jar out of the ground. Nobody picked one off a tree. Yet it is made of something that started out somewhere. Compare it with the wooden peg next to it. The peg started as part of a tree. What did the jar start as?

A tree grew the peg. What grew, or got dug up, or got cooked up, to become this jar?