Things You'll Need:
- Color copy of the Periodic Table
- Research materials, such as scientific biographies
- Ingredients lists on food packages
- Game materials as desired: paper, cards, paper clips, string, pens
- Jump rope for memory game
- Commercially-available board games
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Step 1
Use analogies that are at their level and will interest them. For instance, you could explain that the Periodic Table is the “Kitchen Cupboard of the Universe,” from which you can make recipes for anything. The elements are like cooking ingredients. If you mix them in different proportions, you’ll make different things. Elemental recipes look like this: H2O and C6H12O6. The letters tell you which ingredients to use and the numbers tell you how much to put in.
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Step 2
Tell stories about the discoveries of the elements. Start with elements that are high-interest such as gold, silver, platinum and mercury. Each element was discovered by a real person! These people are often very interesting to read about. You might want to start with Humphry Davy, who discovered magnesium, sodium and potassium, or Marie Curie who discovered radium and polonium.
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Step 3
Read nutritional labels on food boxes and cartons. See how many of the elements you can find. Find out what elements are needed by the human body.
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Step 4
Play a fishing game about the elements. Cut out paper fish and put the name of the element on one side and the letter symbol on the other. Put paper clips on the noses of the fish and use a fishing rod with a magnet on the end of the string. Put fish down on floor with either name or letter symbol facing up. Players have to call which fish they are going for and tell or guess what is on the flip side. If they are correct they get to keep the fish. (As a reward, paper fish could be traded in at the end of the game for fish crackers or candy fish.)
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Step 5
Make trading cards for the elements (similar to baseball cards). Design the front of the card artistically, perhaps even with a funny cartoon image. (For example, for the element helium you could draw colorful balloons.) Use the atomic number as you would a player’s uniform number. On the back, write some key statistics and information about the element, such as atomic weight, oxidation numbers (how many electrons it wants to get or give away), unusual facts about the element, and what the elements can be used for.
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Step 6
Play a jump rope game about the table. Every time you skip over the rope, you say an element. See how far you can recite without before tripping! Say the elements in a sing-song way, emphasizing words that are similar such as boron and carbon, and nitrogen and oxygen. Pause after the end of each line. When you get to the end of the first line of transition metals, you may find this silly rhyme helpful in remembering the order of the elements: FeCoNi’s my cousin (CuZn), his last name is Gallium, he lives in Germanium (Germany), once he ate some arsenic, thought it was selenium, drank it down with bromine, now he’s strong as krypton! (You can hear a sample jump rope rhyme at the music CD link in Resources, below.)
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Step 7
Play board games about the periodic table. You can design your own, or use a commercially available game. Some board games can be found at links given in Resources, below.
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Step 8
Once kids understand what the periodic table means, use children's chemistry resources to do simple experiments. Baking soda and vinegar will mean more to them when they know they are playing with the elements from the table!
