• 60 prompts
  • Checked October 2026

Writing Prompts About Matter

Solids, liquids and gases, a melting day, one ice cube followed to a cloud, and what things are made of.

Writing Prompts About Matter

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  1. It is the hottest day of the summer. Write what melts first, second and third on your street.Angle: start with the smallest thing, in somebody's hand.
  2. Give the weather forecast for the inside of a freezer, with a warm front due when the door opens.Angle: who in there is worried, and who has been frozen too long to care?
  3. Honey, toothpaste or wet sand: pick one thing that is hard to call a solid or a liquid and argue your case.Angle: test it against two rules. Does it hold its shape? Does it flow?

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All 60 prompts

Solid, liquid, gas 15

  • A balloon full of air tells the story of everything bumping around inside it. Fact: the molecules of a gas are in constant, random motion, hitting each other and the walls.
  • Build a poem of three stanzas, one for a solid, one for a liquid and one for a gas, where the lines get looser each time. Fact: particles are tightly packed in a solid, close but moving in a liquid, far apart in a gas.
  • Describe your classroom by its solids, then again by its gases. Angle: the second description needs your nose and your skin more than your eyes.
  • Give a sports commentary on the particles in a glass of water. Fact: in a liquid the particles stay close together but can move past one another.
  • Honey, toothpaste or wet sand: pick one thing that is hard to call a solid or a liquid and argue your case. Angle: test it against two rules. Does it hold its shape? Does it flow?
  • Make up a riddle with three answers: a solid, a liquid and a gas. Angle: one clue about shape, one about flowing, one about filling a room.
  • Pour one cup of water into a tall vase, a flat dish and a boot. Write what changed and what did not. Fact: whatever the container, a liquid has a fixed volume.
  • Sort your kitchen into solids, liquids and gases, then write about the one thing that was hard to place. Fact: matter normally exists as a solid, a liquid or a gas.
  • Spend a day as a gas let out of a jar into a school gym, and write it. Fact: a gas fills its container, taking both its shape and its volume.
  • Unpack a lunch box and sort it for a younger kid: which thing is a solid, which is a liquid, and where the gas is hiding. Angle: the sandwich, the juice and the air in the bag.
  • Write a day as a liquid: every room you enter, you take its shape. Fact: a liquid takes the shape of its container.
  • Write a diary entry for a bolt of lightning that wants to be counted as a state of matter. Fact: plasma is called a fourth state of matter. Lightning, neon lights and stars are plasma.
  • Write an astronaut's breakfast in orbit, where the water will not stay in a cup. Fact: in microgravity a liquid forms a ball.
  • Write the complaint of a solid that is tired of always being the same shape. Fact: a solid holds its shape and changes it only by an outside force, as when broken or cut.
  • You shrink until you can stand among the particles of a solid. Write what the neighbors are doing. Fact: in a solid the particles cannot move freely. They can only vibrate.

A melting day 15

  • A box of crayons is left on a car seat in July. Write what the owner finds. Fact: a change of state is a physical change, not a chemical one.
  • A candle stands on the table through a long dinner. Write the dinner as the wax saw it. Angle: it runs, it slows, it stops, and it is a different shape from the one it started as.
  • A snowman writes a postcard home on the first warm day of spring. Fact: a solid is turned into a liquid by melting.
  • The builders of a snow fort hold a meeting on the day it starts to melt. Write the plan. Angle: shade, more snow, or a dignified goodbye?
  • Butter meets a hot pan. Write the change from solid to liquid in slow motion, one sentence a second. Fact: as heat is added, a solid melts into a liquid at its melting point.
  • Compare two melting things in one paragraph: an ice cube on a plate and a pat of butter on warm toast. Angle: which one runs away and which one soaks in?
  • The cooling at an ice rink breaks down overnight. Write what the first skater finds in the morning. Fact: water is ice only below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, 0 degrees Celsius.
  • Give the weather forecast for the inside of a freezer, with a warm front due when the door opens. Angle: who in there is worried, and who has been frozen too long to care?
  • The icicles on a roof drip all afternoon and stop at dusk. Write why, as one of the icicles. Fact: below 32 degrees Fahrenheit water changes from a liquid to a solid.
  • It is the hottest day of the summer. Write what melts first, second and third on your street. Angle: start with the smallest thing, in somebody's hand.
  • Write a chocolate bar's diary for one afternoon in a back pocket. First line: 2:00. I am still a rectangle.
  • Write a melting day backward: the puddle climbs back up into an icicle. Fact: a liquid is turned into a solid by freezing.
  • Write about a day so cold that things froze solid instead: the puddle, the washing on the line, the dog's water bowl. Angle: describe the sound each one makes when you tap it.
  • Write an apology from the sun to a melting ice cream cone. Angle: the sun explains that it is nothing personal.
  • Write the last five minutes of a popsicle, as the popsicle. Angle: the race is between the tongue and the sun.

The journey of an ice cube 15

  • A melted ice cube is frozen again in a star-shaped mold. Write what it thinks of its new shape. Fact: a liquid takes the shape of its container, and a solid holds the shape it has.
  • An ice cube and a pebble sit in the same glass. Write their conversation an hour later, when only one still has corners. Angle: the pebble has never changed state and does not see the appeal.
  • An ice cube falls behind the refrigerator. Write its journey as a puddle, then as nothing anyone can see. Fact: evaporation happens at the surface of a liquid as it changes into a gas.
  • An ice cube is left on a porch step at noon, and by evening the step is dry. Write a detective's report on where it went. Fact: the sun drives evaporation. Molecules escape the water's surface and form water vapor.
  • An ice cube that became vapor turns solid again without ever being wet. Write where it wakes up. Fact: a gas can change directly into a solid. The change is called deposition.
  • Follow one ice cube from the freezer tray to a cloud. Write every stop. Fact: ice melts to water, water evaporates to vapor, and the vapor can rise and form clouds.
  • Imagine an ice cube that never melts and goes straight from solid to gas. Write the trip. Fact: a solid can change directly into a gas. The change is called sublimation.
  • Interview the same ice cube three times: in the freezer, in the puddle and in the air. Fact: ice, liquid water and water vapor have the same chemical makeup.
  • Two ice cubes race to melt: one in a cold drink, one in a cup of hot tea. Write the race call. Angle: the announcer has very little time for the second one.
  • Write a letter from a cloud to the ice cube tray it came from. Angle: the cloud remembers having corners.
  • Write an ice cube's first minute in a glass of iced tea. First line: Everyone warned me about the warm ones.
  • Write an ice cube's journey as a travel diary with four stamps: tray, glass, air, sky. Angle: what does it miss about each place it leaves?
  • Write an ice cube's return: it left the kitchen as vapor and comes back as drops on a cold window. Fact: condensation is the change from gas to liquid. It commonly happens when a vapor is cooled.
  • Write how an ice cube is made, as told by the water, which finds the whole thing strange. Fact: most liquids take up more room than their solids. Water is the best-known exception.
  • Write the life story of an ice cube in three chapters: solid, liquid, gas. Fact: ice, water and water vapor are the same molecule, two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen.

What is it made of 15

  • A detective proves that a solid gold trophy is a fake by what it is really made of. Write the scene. Angle: the clue is how heavy it feels, how it sounds or how it scratches.
  • Hand a stranger an object in the dark, in words: what it is made of, and how that feels in the hand. Angle: weight, temperature, texture, the sound when tapped.
  • Invent a new material. Write what it is made of and the one job it does better than wood, metal or plastic. Angle: say whether it bends, breaks or melts.
  • Is air matter? Write a paragraph that convinces a doubtful younger kid. Fact: oxygen and nitrogen are the major components of air.
  • Make a list poem: Things made of metal that I touched today. Angle: end on the smallest one.
  • Pick one object on your desk and write what it is made of, then what that is made of, as far down as you can go. Fact: all matter is made from atoms.
  • Plastic, glass or metal: choose what your water bottle should be made of and argue for it. Angle: what happens when you drop it, and when you leave it in the sun?
  • Write a guessing game: describe an object only by what it is made of and let the reader name it. Angle: three clues, hardest first.
  • Write a letter to one atom inside your pencil. Angle: ask where it was before it was a pencil.
  • Write a museum label for an ordinary spoon, as if it were dug up a thousand years from now. Angle: what would they learn from what it is made of?
  • Write a name tag and a short introduction for an oxygen atom at a party of atoms. Fact: an oxygen atom has 8 protons, 8 neutrons and 8 electrons.
  • Write a thank-you note to one material you could not get through a day without. Angle: cotton, glass, rubber, steel, paper. Say what you would use instead.
  • Write the family reunion of everything in your home that is made of wood. Angle: who remembers being a tree?
  • Write the thoughts of a window that has heard the rumor that glass is a slow liquid. Fact: glass is a solid, of the kind called amorphous or non-crystalline.
  • Write what a drop of water is made of, as a tour guide leading a very small group. Fact: a water molecule contains two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen.

How it works

These matter writing prompts follow one thing through a change of state: a crayon on a car seat, an icicle at dusk, an ice cube on its way to a cloud. Many carry a fact from NASA's Glenn Research Center.

Read the full guide

Writing prompts about states of matter

Fifteen prompts take the three states one rule at a time. A day as a liquid means taking the shape of every room you enter; a day as a gas starts in a jar and ends filling a school gym. The writer shrinks to stand among the particles of a solid, and a balloon tells what is bumping around inside it.

The journey of an ice cube

One ice cube is followed from the tray to a glass, a puddle, the air and a cloud, then back to a cold window as drops. It is interviewed three times and is the same water every time.

  • Pick the moment of change and slow it down. Melting takes minutes, so give it a sentence a second.
  • Say what stays the same. The puddle is still the ice cube.

Questions and answers

What are good matter writing prompts for a science class?

Ones with a change to watch. It is the hottest day of the summer: write what melts first, second and third on your street. Or pour one cup of water into a tall vase, a flat dish and a boot, and write what changed.

What are the states of matter?

Matter normally exists as a solid, a liquid or a gas, says NASA's Glenn Research Center. A solid holds its shape, a liquid takes the shape of its container, and a gas fills its container. Plasma, found on the Sun, is called a fourth.

Is melting a physical or a chemical change?

Physical. NASA's page says changes of phase are physical changes, not chemical ones: a molecule of water vapor has the same makeup as a molecule of liquid water or of ice. Fifteen prompts are set on a melting day.

What is matter made of?

Atoms. NASA's page says all matter is made from atoms, and a water molecule is two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. Fifteen prompts start there: pick one object on your desk and write what it is made of, all the way down.

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