Magic Materials! Clay Investigations.

It all started with a lump of clay.

We wondered where it came from. Some thought the moon, some children thought it was made like play dough and some children thought it came from the ground. So we decided we wanted to find out, but how? Miss Brittain grabbed her trusty computer and typed in the question. How is clay made? We found out that it comes from dry riverbeds, so it is a natural material. That got us thinking about manmade and natural materials.  We had another think, if play dough and clay have similar properties are they made the same? Some children thought that play dough was manmade and some thought it was natural. Well there was only one thing left to do. MAKE SOME! Over the past weeks Miss Hong Eng has had busy Discovery Times making play dough with the children to discover if it is manmade or natural.

The investigation continued and we watched a video all about clay. We learned that clay is put in a kiln to make it hard. 'I wish we had a kiln' said Hugo. Well we are very lucky because we do have a kiln so today we went to visit it.

The children are now wondering about if it is still clay when it comes out of the kiln or if it is glass. Why don't you ask them about it? The next step will be making our own thumb pot to put in the kiln and see for ourselves what happens.

Thank you to everyone who is collecting cardboard for our cardboard challenge on Tuesday. Please keep it coming in!