Now Booking for Month, 20xx – Inquire Here

5 lessons to teach materials outdoors for Year 2

Year 2 - Materials

This series of outdoor science lessons turns the study of materials into an active, real-world adventure. Children will investigate the properties and suitability of materials through hands-on experiments, creative challenges, and playful “material monster” activities, all while building key working scientifically skills. With opportunities for written evidence, teamwork, and plenty of outdoor exploration, these lessons make science engaging, memorable, and easy to deliver.

Lesson Plans

Identifying suitability of materials

Introduce your class to the material monsters and investigate what they might ‘eat’. This lesson brings lots of active and hands-on learning opportunities to ensure that your children develop accuracy in identifying different materials.

Learning objective:

To identify the suitability of everyday materials.

Comparing suitability of materials for different uses

Deepen your children’s understanding of the suitability of different materials for different objects in the context of your outdoor space by investigating real life objects. This lesson provides plenty of written evidence to take back into the classroom.

Learning objective:

To compare the suitability of materials for different uses.

Testing absorbency of materials

This outdoor science investigation brings a real life context to understanding the suitability of different materials plus, it’s a lot of fun! This lesson will tick off plenty of working scientifically skills and deepen your children’s understanding of how materials respond to your outdoor environment.

Learning objective:

To test whether materials are absorbent or not.

How the shape of soilid objects can be changed

This outdoor lesson plan investigates bending, squashing, squeezing and stretching and takes the mess of it all outside to save you a long clean up. By the end of the lesson your children will have completed their own simple tests and recorded their results.

Learning objective:

To find out how the shapes of solid objects can be changed.

Bending and stretching solid objects

The main activity of this outdoor lesson is guaranteed to provide high levels of engagement with our activity idea which will leave you excited to deliver this lesson outside.

Learning objective:

To find out how the shapes of solid objects can be changed by bending and stretching.

Before you get started

Safety and suistanability is super important!