What things are made of
Chemistry · Key Stage 1 · The School
Object vs material
A spoon is an OBJECT. What it is made from — metal, plastic, or wood — is its MATERIAL. The same object can come in different materials: a metal spoon and a wooden spoon are both spoons. Scientists always ask both questions: what is it, and what is it made of?
Property words
Materials have properties — words that describe how they behave. Hard or soft. Bendy or stiff. Rough or smooth. Waterproof or absorbent. See-through (transparent) or not (opaque). Glass is hard, smooth, and transparent; a sponge is soft and absorbent.
Choosing the right material
Properties explain choices. Windows are glass because it is transparent and waterproof. Towels are fabric because it is soft and absorbent. A glass towel or a fabric window would fail at its job — the material must match the task.
Line up a metal spoon, a wooden spoon and a plastic spoon. All three are the same OBJECT — a spoon — and they are made of three different MATERIALS. Now go the other way: find three different objects all made of metal, perhaps a spoon, a key and a coin. One material, three objects. Saying both sentences out loud is what separates the two ideas for good.
The same object, different materials
A spoon can be metal, plastic or wood, and each choice changes what the spoon is good for. Metal is strong and gets hot in soup. Plastic stays cool and can melt near a pan. Wood stays cool, does not scratch a pan, and stains. Nobody picked at random; each was chosen for what the material does. Look around a kitchen for three objects made of more than one material and ask, for each part, why THAT material was used there and not somewhere else on the same object.