KS2 materials and their properties resources help teachers bring National Curriculum science topics to life. Hands-on activities, worksheets and experiments make learning about physical properties engaging for Year 3 to Year 6 pupils. Your students need to understand how materials behave, why objects use certain substances and how materials can change. Good resources save you time and keep your lessons on track with what children need to learn.
Michelle Connolly, founder of LearningMole and a former primary teacher with over 15 years of classroom experience, says, “children grasp scientific concepts best when they can touch, test and observe materials themselves rather than just reading about them.” Teaching materials and their properties covers everything from identifying different materials based on physical properties to understanding reversible and irreversible changes.
You can use practical activities to help your class compare hardness, flexibility and strength, and build their scientific vocabulary.
Grouping and classifying materials sits at the heart of KS2 science. Pupils test thermal insulators, investigate magnetic behaviour and explore how materials dissolve or separate. The right resources turn abstract ideas into memorable experiments that stick with your students.
Materials make up everything around us. Understanding their properties helps children identify, compare and group them.
KS2 science focuses on how different materials behave and why certain materials suit specific purposes.
A material is simply what something is made from. Wood, metal, plastic, glass and fabric are all materials you see every day.
Children need to know the difference between an object and the material it uses. A steel paperclip is an object, but steel is the material.
Materials can be natural or human-made. Wood, stone, cotton and wool come from nature. Plastic, concrete and synthetic fabrics are made by people.
When children study KS2 materials, they look at both natural and human-made materials to see where everyday things come from.
Physical properties of materials are features you can see or measure. These include:
Scientists test materials to check these properties. They compare and group materials by their features.
Knowing properties helps you pick the best material for a job. You use transparent glass for windows. Flexible rubber works for tyres.
Materials and their properties in Key Stage 2 usually cover a few main groups.
Metals are strong, hard and shiny. They conduct heat and electricity well. Some, like iron, nickel and cobalt, are magnetic. Different metals have different properties. Aluminium is light, steel is very strong.
Plastics come in all sorts. Some stay rigid and strong, others feel soft and bendy. Plastics can act very differently, which makes them quite interesting to learn about.
Wood varies a lot too. Oak is hard and strong. Balsa wood feels soft and light. Wood breaks down over time, unlike most plastics.
Students spot materials by looking at their features and sorting them into groups with similar properties. Identifying materials based on their physical properties helps children see how different substances behave and why people choose them for certain uses.
Materials have their own traits you can notice or test. Rigidity shows if a material bends or stays firm. Transparency tells you if light passes through. Electric conductivity shows if electricity flows. Magnetism tells you if a material sticks to magnets.
Properties of materials include strength, hardness and flexibility. Metals usually feel strong, hard and shiny. You can hammer them into shapes without breaking them. Wood feels rough and doesn’t let electricity flow. Plastic is waterproof and usually smooth.
Your students can try simple experiments to test these properties. They might see if things float or sink in water. They can hold materials up to the window to check if light passes through. Touching materials shows which feel warm or cold.
You can run materials sorting activities where children group objects by features they share. Give them items like metal spoons, wooden blocks, plastic bottles and glass jars.
Set out trays labelled with properties. Children sort items into ‘magnetic’ or ‘non-magnetic’, ‘transparent’ or ‘opaque’. LearningMole has free science videos showing how to organise classification activities for KS2.
Year 5 students can try tougher sorting. They might group materials by two or more properties. For example, waterproof and flexible items go in one group. Rigid and magnetic materials fit in another.
Children match materials to their uses by understanding physical properties like strength, flexibility and transparency. Scientists and engineers test materials to see which work best for certain jobs.
Physical properties of materials are things you can see or test, like hardness, waterproofing or electrical conductivity.
Not all metals, plastics or woods act the same. Copper conducts electricity well, but iron doesn’t, so copper suits electrical wiring.
Help children learn about everyday materials by looking at classroom objects. A plastic ruler bends without snapping. A metal ruler stays stiff. Glass windows let in light because they’re transparent, but brick walls block light.
When teaching properties of materials, encourage your class to test materials with simple investigations. They might see which fabrics soak up water best or which materials conduct heat fastest.
Engineers and scientists pick materials based on test results and specific physical properties needed for each job. A raincoat needs waterproof fabric. A cooking pot needs something that conducts heat well. Year 5 pupils should explain why certain materials work for certain uses.
LearningMole has free videos showing how to group materials by properties and test if they’re right for different jobs. You can use these with hands-on investigations where children compare materials for real tasks.
Teachers often see pupils work well in groups to solve real problems. Ask your class which material makes the best lunchbox, thinking about durability, weight and how easy it is to clean. Children should use test results to back up their choices, linking properties to uses.
When children test materials in science lessons, they need to compare results properly and keep experiments fair. A comparative and fair test means only the material changes, everything else stays the same.
A fair test keeps everything the same except for what you’re comparing. If you’re testing which material makes the best waterproof jacket, you use the same amount of water, the same size fabric pieces and the same timing for each.
The things you keep the same are called controlled variables. For example, when you test insulation, you use the same cans, the same amount of hot water and the same waiting time.
Teachers often notice Year 5 pupils struggle to keep material thickness the same. Wrapping lots of foil to match cotton wool thickness can be tricky. Sometimes you can’t make a test perfectly fair, but you try to keep as much the same as possible.
Testing which material insulates best means wrapping newspaper, cotton wool, fleece or foil around cans of hot water. You measure the starting temperature, wait 10 minutes, then check which material kept the water warmest.
Another test compares waterproof materials. You stretch cling film, paper towel, cotton, fleece or foil over bowls with elastic bands. Pour the same amount of water onto each and see which lets water through.
You can test material strength by hanging weights from strips of different fabrics until they tear. Make sure each strip is the same length and width. Record how much weight each holds before breaking to find the strongest.
Heat or cold makes matter change from one state to another, like melting, freezing, or evaporating. When you heat or cool materials, their particles start to act differently.
We usually talk about three states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. Each state acts differently because of how the particles arrange themselves and move about.
Solids have particles packed tightly in a fixed pattern. These particles vibrate but don’t really move from their spots, so solids keep their shape. Think of ice, wood, or metal.
Liquids have particles that stay close but can slip past each other. Liquids flow and take the shape of their container, but the volume stays the same. Water, milk, and oil are all liquids.
Gases have particles that spread out and zip around quickly in all directions. They fill any space available and you can compress them. Air, steam, and helium are examples you’ll find in KS2 Science resources on changing materials.
Heating or cooling a material changes its state. If you heat a solid up to its melting point, it becomes a liquid. Ice melts into water at 0°C. Chocolate? It melts when you hold it.
Freezing is the other way round. When you cool a liquid, it becomes a solid. Water freezes into ice at 0°C, which is why puddles turn solid on frosty mornings.
Evaporating happens when a liquid turns into a gas. If you heat water, it becomes water vapour. You see this when a puddle dries up on a sunny day or when a kettle boils. The water doesn’t disappear—it changes into an invisible gas and mixes with the air.
Condensation is when a gas cools and turns back into a liquid. You’ll spot this when water droplets appear on a cold window or mirror after a hot shower. These processes like boiling, freezing, and condensation pop up in the Year 4 curriculum.
When a solid mixes so well with a liquid that you can’t see it, it has dissolved to make a solution. You can actually get the solid back if you use evaporation.
If a material dissolves in a liquid, it breaks into tiny bits that spread out and vanish from sight. The solid hasn’t gone anywhere. It just mixes so completely that your eyes can’t pick it out.
Soluble materials dissolve in a liquid. Insoluble materials don’t.
Salt and sugar dissolve in water. If you stir them in, they disappear and make a solution. Sand and chalk don’t dissolve. They either sink or float, but they won’t mix in.
The Year 5 curriculum asks you to know that some materials dissolve in liquid to form a solution. Temperature makes a difference too. Warm water helps things dissolve faster than cold water does.
You can get dissolved stuff back by evaporating the liquid. When you heat a solution, the liquid turns into gas and leaves the solid behind. This shows dissolving can be reversed.
Teachers often show this by dissolving salt in water and leaving it in a warm spot. After a few days, the water goes and salt crystals appear. If you heat it gently, the process goes faster, but don’t overdo it.
LearningMole has free videos showing evaporation experiments for Key Stage 2. Filtering can also separate mixtures, but that only works for insoluble materials. Sieving is handy for separating bigger bits from liquids.
Students can use physical methods to get original materials back from mixtures. The main techniques are filtering to remove solids from liquids and sieving to sort by size.
Filtering pulls solid bits out of liquids by pouring the mixture through something with tiny holes. You might use filter paper, coffee filters, or even a kitchen sieve to show this.
The KS2 science curriculum covers dissolving and separating mixtures. Filtering lets the liquid through while trapping the solids. It works well for sand and water, or for separating tea leaves from tea.
Try filtering activities with funnels, filter paper, and clear beakers. Students notice the filtered liquid (the filtrate) looks clearer than the original. The solid left behind is called the residue.
Filtering experiments help students see how particle size matters. Year 5 pupils can try different methods of separating mixtures in practical lessons.
Sieving sorts dry materials of different sizes using a mesh or perforated surface. You can grab a kitchen sieve, colander, or special school gear for this.
Sieving works best with things like sand and gravel, rice and pasta shapes, or dried peas and lentils. Smaller bits fall through, bigger bits stay in the sieve. LearningMole has free videos that show sieving and other science methods for primary kids.
Your Year 5 class can try sieves with different mesh sizes and see what gets through. They should note which materials pass and which don’t. This links to properties and changes of materials lessons in the National Curriculum.
Students usually enjoy seeing how mesh size affects speed and separation. Finer mesh takes longer but sorts out smaller particles.
Materials change in two main ways. Some changes can be undone, while others create new materials you just can’t get back to the original form.
Reversible changes let you get back the original material. If you freeze water into ice, you can melt it and get water again. The material looks different, but it’s still the same stuff.
Some common examples:
Water is a classic example. It freezes at 0°C, melts back, boils at 100°C, and condenses again. It stays water all the way through.
If you dissolve salt in water, it seems to vanish. But if you evaporate the water, the salt comes back as crystals. That proves the change was reversible.
Irreversible changes make new materials you can’t turn back. These usually happen because of chemical reactions that create completely different substances.
Burning is a clear one. If you burn wood, you get ash and smoke. You can’t turn ash or smoke back into wood.
Cooking often involves irreversible changes:
Rusting is another example. Iron reacts with oxygen and water, making rust (iron oxide). Rust is different from iron, and you can’t reverse it.
Mixing vinegar with bicarbonate of soda causes an irreversible change too. You get bubbles of carbon dioxide, water, and salt. You can’t split them back into vinegar and bicarbonate of soda.
Children can mix materials to make something new with different properties. Scientists and engineers do the same when they invent materials you won’t find in nature.
When you combine materials, you get something with different properties from the originals. Concrete forms when you mix cement, water, sand, and gravel. It starts off soft but turns really hard and strong.
Properties of materials depend on what you mix and how you do it. Year 5 pupils often try making papier-mâché by mixing paper strips with glue or paste. It ends up lighter than wood, but tougher than plain paper.
Your students can test combining materials in simple experiments. They might mix flour and water for paste, or try oil and vinegar to see if they’ll blend. These hands-on activities help children realise that new materials can be very different from their ingredients.
Scientists invent new materials by testing combinations and processes in the lab. Plastic came from chemically changing oil into long chains of molecules that could be shaped. Coming up with something new often takes years of trial and error.
Teaching resources for KS2 materials can help you explain real-world examples. Nylon, Velcro, and Kevlar were all invented to solve specific problems. Engineers wanted materials that were stronger, lighter, or more flexible than what nature offered.
You’ll find video demonstrations on LearningMole showing how everyday materials were developed. Modern inventors keep creating things like self-healing concrete and biodegradable plastics. These new ideas come from understanding how materials work and what properties are needed for the job.
Teachers rely on a mix of materials to help students get to grips with how different materials behave and why we use them for certain things. Good teaching resources include printable activities that back up key ideas, plus practical experiments where children can actually get their hands on things and explore material properties themselves.
You can pick up worksheets and lesson plans covering material properties from Year 3 through to Year 6. These often have sorting tasks where students decide if materials are natural or man-made, matching games linking materials to their properties, and comparison activities.
PowerPoint presentations usually go alongside worksheets to introduce new ideas. Resources with starter quizzes are handy for checking what students already know before you move on. Some include both filled-in and blank versions, so you can choose the right level of support for your class.
Visual sorting activities really help younger KS2 pupils. These might get children to group objects by whether they conduct heat, repel water, or attract magnets.
Practical investigations let students see material properties in real life, not just on paper. You might set up tests to see which materials dissolve in water, compare thermal conductors and insulators, or try out magnets on different objects.
Year 5 activities often focus on reversible and irreversible changes. Students might watch ice melt, bread toast, or paper burn to spot the differences.
Safety matters, always. Make sure experiments match your students’ abilities and you’ve got the right equipment. Many KS2 science resources give equipment lists and step-by-step guides, which makes life a bit easier when you’re planning.
Students always seem to have similar questions when they learn about materials—why do certain objects behave in certain ways, and what makes us pick one material over another? These common questions actually help teachers plan hands-on experiments that make the science behind materials stick in students’ minds.
Wood, metal, and plastic turn up everywhere. Wood’s strong and easy to cut, so it’s great for furniture and building. Metal is hard and conducts electricity and heat, which makes it perfect for pots, pans, and wires.
Plastic’s lightweight and waterproof, so you’ll see it in bottles and containers. Glass is see-through and smooth—think windows and drinking cups. Paper’s flexible and handy for writing, but it tears easily.
Each material has its own properties, like hardness, flexibility, transparency, and whether it conducts heat or electricity. These features make them suitable for particular jobs.
You can classify materials by grouping them by shared features. One way is by how hard or soft things are, so you might compare metal, rubber, and foam.
Another way is to sort by whether they let water through. Plastic and rubber keep water out, while paper and fabric soak it up.
You could also group materials as transparent, translucent, or opaque, depending on how much light passes through. Some materials are magnetic, others aren’t. You can also check if they conduct electricity or act as insulators.
Testing material properties with hands-on experiments really helps Year 5 pupils understand how materials change. Set up stations where they hang weights from things to see which ones break or bend.
Dissolving tests are fun too—students can try sugar, salt, sand, and flour in water to see what disappears and what doesn’t. Temperature makes a difference, so let them try warm and cold water.
You can show reversible and irreversible changes by burning paper, melting chocolate, or mixing baking powder with vinegar. Some changes can be undone, others can’t.
LearningMole has curriculum-aligned videos that use visual demonstrations and practical examples to explain material properties. BBC Bitesize offers interactive games and quizzes for KS2 properties and changes of materials.
Twinkl resources include worksheets, PowerPoints, and activity cards you can use in class or for homework. Most can be downloaded and tweaked for different ability levels.
School Learning Zone gives free online lessons that explain properties of materials with diagrams and straightforward explanations. These work well on interactive whiteboards or tablets.
Most materials expand when you heat them and shrink when you cool them, but the amount of change depends on the material. Metals conduct heat really well, so they warm up and cool down faster than wood or plastic.
Some materials change state when you heat or cool them. Ice melts into water at 0°C, and water boils into steam at 100°C. Chocolate melts when warm and hardens when cold, which is a reversible change.
Water can change materials too. Paper goes soggy and weak, metal can rust, and some plastics might get brittle. Knowing how materials react to things like heat and water helps explain why we use them in certain places—some are better outdoors, some indoors.
The egg drop challenge gets students to design protective packaging from different materials. They try to stop an egg from breaking when it drops. Kids learn about strength, flexibility and shock absorption in a way they’ll actually remember.
Try testing waterproof properties by wrapping different materials around sponges, then dunking them in water. Students can see for themselves which materials keep the sponge dry and which ones let water soak through.
Making slime is always a hit. When you mix the ingredients, you end up with something completely new. It’s a simple way to show how combining materials changes their properties.
Grab a magnet and test which materials are magnetic using various objects. Pupils soon realise not all metals stick to magnets.
Build 3D shapes from different materials. This shows how the structure can affect strength and stability.
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