Brief Description
Something you can’t easily change the shape of by cutting, bending or squeezing, like a rock or a table.
How to Talk About This Term with Young Children
For Structure and Properties of Materials: Point out the structure and properties of materials in everyday experiences. Encourage children to compare and contrast items with different properties. What do they notice? How might these properties help an object fulfill its function or be used for a particular purpose?
For Forces and Motion: Encourage children to think about how properties of a surface might affect the way objects move on that surface. How does the movement of a toy car change when tested on a hard, flat surface, vs a soft, fluffy surface?
For Living Things: Some animals have hard parts of their bodies. Encourage children to think about why. What purpose might this part serve? For example, one purpose of a turtle’s hard shell is to protect the turtle.
For States of Matter: Bring attention to the properties of materials in everyday experiences. Draw comparisons between items that hard or soft, smooth and rough, etc. Notice how a material’s properties can change such as when water freezes into ice and becomes hard.