Chemistry: Making a giant periodic table (with links for printable periodic tables)

The boys only have a few more (I)GCSE exams to take (in June), so I've been taking a small breather and trying to get back the rhythm of our old home ed. It's not easy when we've been totally focused on box-ticking and hoop-jumping for the year.

After several months of not-much-chemistry I'm picking up where I left off doing Ellen McHenry's 'The Elements" with dd. If you haven't checked out Ellen McHenry's website, please do. There are lots of fab freebie printables to download, as well as various downloadable curricula to purchase. We've used both The Elements and Carbon Chemistry (a follow-on programme) with my boys and I can highly recommend them. They are particularly ideal for that tricky pre-teen age, when children often seem to want a bit more of a challenge, but still want to do lots of hands-on learning. 

So, today we were back to the periodic table and learning about atoms by using Skittles sweets to show electrons in their orbits. Of course we use sweets for our demonstrations as much as possible. It gives me an excuse to go to the shop and buy chocolate for myself. Not that I need excuses ;)

Inspired by what we've learned today dd and I are now in the process of making a giant periodic table. The hope is to make one large enough that we can actually stick little bags of examples of the elements (the non-radioactive ones) onto the table. Or at least stick photos on. Well, that's the idea. 

Dogzilla not really helping with our giant periodic table

You can find various printable versions of the periodic table here. 

http://sciencenotes.org/printable-periodic-table/

(We have decided to use this totally blank periodic table so we can add our own pictures/samples and titles

http://sciencenotes.org/blank-periodic-table/ )

The files will print out to standard A4 size.

To print out a really massive version, on more than one A4 sheet:

1) Download the PDF of the table you prefer. 

2) Open up the PDF

3) Click on print. This will open up the various print options.

4) Select 'poster' (on my screen this is to the left of the print options, about half way down, and has a little picture of 4 sheets of paper)

5) Increase the size of the tile scale (I've just printed mine out at 500%). You might need to click in another box to refresh, but you should find a small image displayed showing how the pages will be arranged.

6) When you're happy with the size, confirm that you want to print.

7) Stick the pages together. You might find it helpful to click print again, put in the same tile scale and refer to the little preview to help you piece together the jigsaw of pages. 

The weight of air (stand back, we're doing science!)

In another attempt to restore balance to what has become our far-too-table-based home education, I've been trying to carve out some time for some hands-on science.

I've been attempting to finish Ellen McHenry's 'Cells' with the two boys, but there are always other priorities for the eldest (IGCSE-related) so it's been slow progress.

But these past couple of weeks we've got as far as the dissolve-egg-shell-in-vinegar-and-demonstrate-osmosis-by-dunking-egg-in-syrup-or-water experiment.

It was supposed to take about 3 or 4 days for the egg shell to dissolve to the point where there was just a floppy sack of white and yolk. 8 days in and, apart from some minor bubbling at first, not much was happening. Just as I was wondering how much longer I would have to display softened smelly eggs in vinegar on our windowsill for the neighbours and anyone passing our house to see, I had an idea.

The problem, I deduced was that, being a cheapskate thrifty person we'd used a jar of old pickled onion vinegar. (We have a plentiful collection of random jars of pickled onion vinegar in the cupboard taking up much needed space, but alas I simply cannot dispose of them.)Trouble was, this old pickled onion vinegar was probably more dilute than nice fresh shop-bought vinegar...and it had year-old bits of pickled onion skin floating around in it which may have somewhat contaminated the experiment.

When we changed to fresh vinegar the eggs positively fizzled and the problem of *there's nothing happening mummy* was solved. 3 eggs fizzing on our windowsill...and later 3 eggs floating in syrup and water.

Does air weigh anything?

This is the question recently posed by the other science course we're using Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding (BFSU) Vol 1

 With a bit of scientific experimentation (otherwise known as fiddling the results) we discovered that if you dangled two bags on strings on a ruler, on a shoelace from the handle of a saucepan, over the edge of a table, then, yes, air does actually weigh something. It was just a little don't-move-or-you'll-mess-it-up amount of something.

We really don't need to be starting yet another science 'course'. We have a huge shelf of science books, many of which we never get around to reading or using. But... I love the idea behind BFSU. I love the discursive aspect of the course. I love how it's not just another 'do this experiment, get this result' science book.

But it is a very wordy book, and it does take some prep to be able to use it. The parent really has to be on board to lead/steer a discussion. It's written for a class of same-age children, so although it is home-ed friendly, it's not always easy to implement with a smaller group of different age children. Trying to lead a discussion ds2 (who is 12 and knows most of the answers)  and dd (who is a young 10 and would rather be blowing bubbles than pondering the difference between a liquid and a gas) takes some managing. The book is also supposed to be approached in a manner whereby the kids are doing biology and chemistry and physics side-by-side in an ongoing web of related activities and discussions. It does my head in just thinking about trying to juggle all of that. I've not seen anything like it before and it takes some getting used to. This is our second attempt at the book, and I'm hoping it will get easier as we go along.


And today...our BFSU science required some blowing of bubbles ('little packages of air particles')

And not all science is *that* sort of science. This is science too. At least I think it is science. Because I can't understand why else a child would play on the computer with a box on their head. Surely it's *got* to be an experiment.

Ellen McHenry "The Elements" Lesson plan/scheme of work

Our 'lesson plan' for Ellen McHenry's The Elements. I've included a selection of the activities, but feel free to add in more or alter to suit your needs. We found it best to pre-prepare all the games before we started the course as the prep can be quite time-consuming. Most of all, follow your kids' lead :) Mine liked to play the chemistry games, so we slotted in extra sessions just for game playing. Ellen McHenry can be found here :

You should be able to download and print the document using the download button at the bottom of the document.

Ellen McHenry The Elements SchemePDF by scifreak64

Ellen McHenry The Elements (2013)

We've done The Elements before with ds1 and ds2. It was a fun hands-on approach to chemistry and a fabulous stepping stone to GCSE level science. Ds1 did no other chemistry than Ellen before starting IGCSE  chemistry and recently passed (at age 14), so Ellen McHenry was obviously a great start..

This time dd is joining in with ds2. The games and nick-nacks that go with the course are already prepared from our last run-through, so that's saving us some time. 

I've written up a plan for the sessions (will post that up later for anyone who wants to use it). After doing the fly-by-the-seat-of-pants approach to home ed for many years it dawned on me that what I need is planning. Out goes chaotic use of resources, where we open the book only to find out we haven't got what we need. and in comes an organised session plan that makes those resources 'open-and-go'. Well, that's the theory. 

Electrolysis of water

Bubbles of hydrogen and Oxygen forming at the electrodes

Fishing for Elements

The Periodic Table game

Ellen McHenry science: eyes are bigger than stomach

I'm hoping to catch up with biology with the kids over summer. To kick off we've dug out the free Ellen McHenry invertebrate lift-the-flap classification chart from here.

It's a shame she never made a vertebrate version, but I rediscovered the classification cards that I'd lovingly laminated long ago when I was in a laminating mood and these are now velcroed to a felt board. I am starting to feel like a proper home educator ;)

Ellen McHenry's The Elements has made a reappearance. We've used it before so most of the printing and prep for games has already been done. I'm also planning to start Environmental biology IGCSE with ds1. Well, we are going to tentatively dip our toes in that direction (let's not get ahead of ourselves).

As you might have guessed, it's a case of eyes bigger than stomach. My enthusiasm to cover lots of subjects is larger than the time or energy we have to do it all.

It's all been leading up to this...

Tomorrow ds1 takes his first ever exam.

This morning I woke up feeling like I'd been booked to give a poetry reading to a group of 20 Hells Angels.

The two are not unconnected.



Since September, ds1 (age 14), has been studying Chemistry with a group of home ed teens in another county. Each week we've driven over an hour for his 2 hour class.

Before joining the group we'd done quite a bit of basic chemistry. Mostly we'd used the Ellen McHenry chemistry downloads (which, incidentally, are fab). When we moved on to IGCSE-level work at home we found out that doing stuff from a textbook with your mother is darn tedious.

If I'd had the energy to make it interesting and hands-on, I would've, but I didn't. And with the best will in the world I'm not going to. So the chemistry group has been a godsend. Ds1 has had plenty of larfs with kids his age, and along the way he's learned heaps too.

It's been a steep learning curve. Less than 3 years ago he was still writing his letters backwards, putting capitals in the middle of words, and had to concentrate just to spell his own name. He'd had some help with his 'dylexic' symptoms, but when we started chemistry he'd never written more than a short sentence. And very rarely ;)

When we started I knew ds1 would have to work harder to prove himself on paper than many other teens. If reading text is hard...and writing is hard...and spelling, punctuation, grammar - and just remembering what you were writing when you're halfway through your sentence - is hard...then however bright you are, exams are going to be hard.

When we started IGCSEs he didn't know how to title a page, where to put the question number, how to mark points on a graph, how to label a diagram or even how to draw a straight line with a ruler. Sure, he had lots of knowledge and skills, but unlike in school, where you have to do the tedious stuff every day until it is engraved on your brain forever, he'd found no need to learn this particular skill set.

And then there was content. CONTENT. (There was so much of it I have to write it in capitals.)

And learning how to apply that content.

And then, towards the end, there have been exam skills to learn -  jumping the hurdles of the mark schemes...the art of educated guessing...how to tick those exact boxes. It's been a long hard slog for him, and exhausting for me.
 
And the worst thing is that it feels as if everything we have done - everything we have ever done in our home education - has been leading up to this moment.

Ridiculous, of course, because there is so much more to life than exams. Exams are hoop-jumping. Box-ticking. They are not truly representative of  the worth of a human being and they do not demonstrate the extensive skills a person may have.

But exam results are visible proof that we (I) have done a good job. They are something the rest of society looks at and judges.

They are tangible things we can hold up and say 'There! See! I told all along we were doing fine!'

They are the equivalent of blowing a large fat raspberry at all the doubters who ever questioned our decision to home educate our children.

The pressure on home educators to do a good job - that responsibility not to screw up our children's lives through choosing an alternate route - is immense. Even when we don't think about it, we think about it. It becomes an integral part of us. The need to prove, to demonstrate, to defend our choice. However wonderful our home ed day is, however much we or our child achieves, however happy we are with our education choices and beliefs, there is no getting away from the fact that THE BUCK STOPS HERE.

And that's a biggie.

Since we started GCSEs I've had lots of doubts along the way. I loathe the box-ticking world of GCSEs. I know it doesn't *mean* anything. I have enough certificates to paper a wall, but I'm far from a "natural" in the workplace. And, last time I looked, no job description requires you to pass exams for a living.
 
I ummed and ahhhed for a long time. I swung this way and that. But in the end I wanted - I want - to give him choices. Doing a few exams gives him those choices. He may never use those bits of paper, but at least when he's 16 or 18 or whenever, he will have the chance to take some different paths. Along the way I've developed a nice thick skin ;) to the criticism and judgements of our more autonomous HE friends as we've moved towards more structure and parental direction in our HE style. It's not all been plain sailing and when this exam is over we will need to restore some balance :)




Tomorrow ds1 is taking his first exam.

Hopefully I wont be reading poetry to a group of Hells Angels.

Smoothies and other recent activities

Today, somewhen in between watching Supermarket Sweep ( boy did that bring back memories!) and Jamie's (probably not) 15 minute meals on TV the idea suddenly came to us to make smoothies. So we hauled out the 3-yr old frozen raspberries from the bottom of the freezer and bought yoghurt from our favourite corner shop.

Lots of sugar later, plus addition of some very pippy blackberries (this year's), a glug of milk and a couple of unripe bananas, and we had something resembling a spontaneous smoothy. Not quite Jamie's 15 minute meal, but good enough.

Meanwhile other things have been going on. We (sis and I) cleaned the bird table and seed holders and tried to mend the table  roof with a bit of brush fence and a staple gun. It's been months and months since we last fed them, so it may take more than a wonky new roof and dried mealworms to tempt them back from the neighbours' gardens.

Ds1 has now finished all his archaeology for the year. His last mission was a geophysical survey of a local park in sub- zero temperatures. I guess he's still keen. The group leader said he was 'welcome back anytime', which could be because there aren't many adult volunteers willing to freeze their wotsits off in a field for no apparent recompense.

There could, however, be an alternative reason. The leader did comment:

 'I've taught some very uninterested undergrads and it's a pleasure to find someone keen and who asks sensible questions'

( a small SMUG HOME EDUCATOR MOTHER moment to add to the collection).

Over the past few eeks dd has spent a little more time on her bat lapbook. I did say to her that simply printing out photos from Google was all very well, but how about actually doing some of the bat information content of the lapbook? We arrived at something I'd like to call a compromise. Some might call it a mother's too knackered to argue solution.

The boys have started Conquer Maths (have I mentioned that before?) All seems to be going smoothly. Ds2 discovered that there is a very good reason why you should do the different sections in order when he unexpectedly encountered algebra in the geometry section.

Ds1 is still plodding through IGCSE Geography and Chemistry. The former is proving the most difficult of the two due to his general 'dyslexic' tendencies. We are encountering difficulties that I had not foreseen and that seem, so far, impossible to work around. I'll be writing a separate post about this in the near future.

Spurned on by me browsing USB microscopes and wondering if we can afford them, dh got out our microscope.  He'd neglected to inform me he'd fixed the light on it 18 months ago (I'd been waiting all that time, not daring to nag about yet another thing that needed 'fixing'.) Anyhow, he found a way to fix the web cam to the microscope so we could get a picture on the pc. It needs to be refined, but it looks cool :)

Dd has received a package from her new penfriend in Israel. The package contained lots of sweets which was dd's idea of a perfect delivery! We're yet to receive a package from the recipients of our last worldwide culture swap ( a mini winter swap) but hopefully it will arrive soon.

And now, onwards to Christmas!
(Our first sprinkling of snow, last week)

 

This month (November)

November is nearly over and it's time for a quick catch-up of what we've been up to this month.

Autumn walks in the woods

 (with home-made dart shooters)

Visits to home ed group to do Chemistry, Spanish, Art, Arts Award (and time for dd to sneak off and play on the communal computer)

Bat-themed activities

Bat origami

Online bat jigsaws (here )

Putting together a festive mini-swap for Worldwide Culture Exchange (sent to the USA). Pick three to five items representing Christmas/The Winter holidays in your family and send it to another family. Mini-swap sign-up form can be found here (festive mini-swap open til the end of November)

Digging for dinosaurs in a wolf suit (thank you 99p shop!)

Playing lego games

 Fungal foraging

 And spore printing

 
 Enjoying outdoor times with friends

Looking at lichen

Sewing Christmas decorations and printing cards

Making a mobile of the solar system (printable here)

Ds digs up our area in the name of archaeology (and finds pottery, nails, bones and a medieval tile painted with a griffin) 

Leaf rubbings

Making a printer out of Lego Mindstorms

Artwork (experimenting with symmetry)

 Trip to Aldeburgh Poetry Festival (me, without the children). Hence plenty of time to take arty photographs...

Fencing competitions

Bug handling workshops

Paper-chain alkanes and the health hazards of soda bread

My list of resource links has been getting rather raggedy and cumbersome, and so today I tweaked and rearranged it.

I do hate putting resources into subject categories because: a) websites often cover a wide range of subjects and b) home education has made me realise how pigeonholing information and learning into 'subjects' tends to be a very limiting way to think about education. But, I concede that a few more headings will make it easier for blog visitors to find the resources they want. And it will give me the opportunity to add more links as and when I have time.

And, talking about 'subjects', we've been doing some more chemistry from that wonderful site Ellen McHenry's Basement Workshop We completed The Elements a few months ago, had a break, and are now working our way through Carbon Chemistry .

Here's a photo of the kids making Alkanes (hydrocarbons with single carbon to carbon bonds) in paper-chain fashion. The idea was to make different length alkanes and then name them (Methane, butane, propane etc), but my kids had different ideas and ended up with a competition to see who could make the longest chain. [After years of home educating I've come to realise that where kids are concerned nothing ever really goes to plan and I just have to be flexible. I recommend that control freaks do not apply for the job.]

Often when we follow a set package or piece of structured learning it doesn't last long. A few weeks of enthusiasm, perhaps, followed by dragging of heels, stamping of feet, and worse, depending on how soon we abandon the project. But of all the structured things we've done, these chemistry packages have been by far the best.

Maybe it's because I'm a scientist by training (though I confess I was always hopeless at chemistry), but I'll continue to recommend Ellen McHenry's chemistry courses. Although they don't correspond directly with UK science syllabus I think they would make a marvellous pre-GCSE/pre-IGCSE foundation. And you can pick and mix what you learn, avoiding (as we do) the comprehension questions at the end of each chapter and simply sticking to the fun stuff - the games & experiments.

The other science I would recommend is The Happy Scientist. Great experiments that usually require few materials and can be done at home. Although many of the resources are free it is worth the small yearly fee so you can have access to all the experiment videos.

And in addition to Carbon Chemistry we are also dabbling in cooking. Yes, I know, scary. As I've said before our plan is to work our way through (some of) The River Cottage Family Cookbook by Posh Boy (Hugh Fearnley-whotshisname). We've made bread, and now, soda bread (see below). Sorry, no photos of the finished product - we ate it before I got the camera out!

(Read the recipe. I said READ the recipe. No, that's 2 teaspoons of salt. NOT tablespoons. Arrggghh!)

(No, don't look what's going into that soda bread mixture.

I try not to think of ds1's black fingernails as I taste the bread.

Mmmm...lovely)