We often come across things that have been mixed together.

If you pour muesli into a bowl at breakfast time you can see that it is a mixture of things like oat flakes, fruits and nuts.

Another, not so tasty, mixture might be the paper, glass and tins in a recycling bin.

The things in a mixture don't join together to make something new. They can be separated out.

These beans and peas make a colourful (and nutritious!) mixture. With a lot of patience, they could be separated into small piles of different peas and beans. Maybe there's a better way...?

Let's look at some of the ways we can separate mixtures.