19 February 2009

What it’s like - plastic

In our classroom we have wooden desks and tables and wooden cubbies and pencils.  We have metal pencil sharpeners and paper-clips and scissors.  We have glass windows and a glass jug.

However, we have plastic rulers and buckets; plastic baskets and dice; plastic counters and cogs; plastic bricks and stopwatches; plastic timers and glue sticks; plastic, plastic and more plastic.

When we looked at our collection of wooden things, we noticed that most of them were brown.  Our metal collection was made up of things that were a shiny silvery colour.  The glass things were transparent or tinged with green.

Plastic things, on the other hand, were all the colours of the RAINBOW

Plastic, it would appear, comes in many different forms and guises; shapes and sizes.

Plastic can be transparent like glass and hold water, like Raamy’s puzzle.

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It can be soft, flexible, translucent and waterproof like Chloe’s raincoat.

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It can be hard, dull and opaque like Sharukh’s transformer.

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It can be shiny, rigid and brittle like Meghna’s recycled racing car (can you see what she made it from?)

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It can be cut like a diamond and make light distort, like Amelia’s kaleidoscope.

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Find some different things made of plastic.  Ask yourself:   

Is it flexible, stretchy or rigid?

Is it transparent, opaque or translucent?                   Is it hard or soft?
Is it strong or weak?
Is it heavy or light?
Is it shiny, reflective or dull?
Is it breakable or bouncy?

Sometimes plastic can trick you into thinking it is something else entirely.  Remember our ‘glass’ mirror…..

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and our ‘metal’ CD?

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