Gearing Up for Chemistry
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We’ve been in Christian Kids Explore Earth and Space for awhile, so we’re excited to be moving on to chemistry. It’s always fun to start a new book, isn’t it? At least for awhile. I’m especially excited because I’ve found some fun-looking resources to incorporate as we move through chemistry, so I thought I’d share them with you. Keep in mind, I haven’t used all of these yet, they just look like some fun things we’ll incorporate in our study of chemistry.
First, check out this post on teaching Chemistry to children for some excellent resources.
Another excellent resource is (are?) Sadie’s chemistry unit posts at It’s a Boy’s Life. We’re totally making our own turmeric paper when we’re ready to test for acids and bases.
A few pages I’ve bookmarked (I think from Jimmie’s Squidoo page, but I can’t remember for sure) that look really interesting are:
- this really cool, interactive periodic table
- a blank periodic table for us to fill in
- another nice, interactive periodic table
- the elements, set to music (I even bought some speakers for my laptop, so we can all hear it!)
A couple of books that I’m looking forward to are The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry
and Fizz, Bubble & Flash!: Element Explorations & Atom Adventures for Hands-On Science Fun!.
If you have some favorite chemistry resources, I’d love to hear them! We’re just getting started, so now is the perfect time to start saving up book, link, and activity suggestions.
Kris Bales is a newly-retired homeschool mom and the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest founder (and former owner) of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. Kris and her husband of over 30 years are parents to three amazing homeschool grads. They share their home with three dogs, two cats, a ball python, a bearded dragon, and seven birds.
Chemistry is my favorite subject! The Fizz, Bubble, Flash book is an excellent book, your kids will love it! Looking forward to reading your future reports as you guys venture into Chem!
Cool! Thanks for the resource links. Listened to the song — neat how he fit all those names in! Here's another song about the elements by They Might Be Giants — my children really enjoy it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy0m7jnyv6U
TMBG also has other educational songs.
We're completing this study. Thanks for the links.
We really liked Fizz, Bubble, and Flash. Also The Mystery of the Periodic Table is good. (Especially for your oldest)
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/kristenph
We are just wrapping up our chemistry! Check us out if you need some visuals. 😉
I'm planning on teaching a chemistry class at our co-op next semester. I'm using Ellen McHenry's "The Elements" (https://www.ellenjmchenry.com/id25.html) as our spine – I've already received it and am very excited! And, chemistry was one of my favorite subjects in college. 🙂
Thanks for the links, etc – I'll be checking back here as I plan my studies!
Great post! I am SO saving this for when my kids are older!
We bought the book Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments last year. My oldest is only in 7th grade, and we haven't started using the book yet, but I've looked through it and it is phenomenal! It's like the ideal homeschooler's guide to chemistry experiements!