Learning the Periodic Table

I am often surprised by how much my kids remember. It has been 4 years since we did Chemistry yet they remember playing a Periodic Table game and also arranging cards to make a table. After reading about Dmitri Mendeleev today and hearing about how he arranged cards when he was putting together the first periodic table they asked me if I still had the cards we arranged 4 years ago. I went to the closet and pulled them out. Thank goodness I hadn't thrown them away. After all that printing and cutting I guess I couldn't bring myself to get rid of them.

 It took a bit of effort and they had to peek at the Periodic Table we have on our wall in order to complete this task but they did it.

 They then asked to play the Periodic Table game. I had downloaded this one and laminated the board. It too was still in our game closet stuck against the wall behind a bunch of other games. So we played this today too.

This game had us carefully reading the names of the elements we landed on (you get extra points if you know the place or person an element is named for). We also were careful to watch for the gasses or liquids and even the radioactive elements because you either got to roll again or add radioactive shields. So as we played this game we learned a bit more about the table and helped plant a bit more into our memories.

 I won the game since I landed on the space that allowed me to go down the rare earth metals rows. The kids all jumped over those spaces and got to the end faster but didn't get to rack up as many points.

 What did Molly do this whole time? She pulled a bunch of stuff out of our game closet. There were all sorts of games dumped out all over the floor. She eventually found some magnetic letters and ran to the fridge to put them up. She actually put the alphabet up in order. This girl is not far from reading.

It was a fun lesson on the Periodic Table.

What added to the fun was that I was able to share a few tidbits of information I have been learning while reading The Disappearing Spoon. I have really found this book interesting. I keep sharing things I learn from it with my husband and kids.

I don't remember studying chemistry as a kid and don't know how I passed chem in high school. It seemed more like a math class than a science. I did take some science in college but not chemistry, it was scary! But I am having so much fun learning about the elements, how and where they were discovered and how they react. Suddenly chemistry is fascinating to study. I guess I just needed to become the teacher before it started to make sense and become interesting to me.

One of the many benefits of homeschooling. I am learning so much!