Chemistry for Elementary Students

Our final science unit for last year was Chemistry.  This hadn't been part of my original plan for the year, but all of a sudden my children decided they want to learn about chemistry.  It is not easy to find resources for early and mid elementary on Chemistry.  But I did find a couple of books and a great lapbook that were at an appropriate level.  So I put them all together and came up with a fairly decent Chemistry unit. 

For our lapbook we used Foundations for Chemistry from "In the Hands of a Child."  I have yet to find a lapbook from them that isn't fun or exciting and this was no exception. While completing the mini books some of the topics we learned about included  matter, atoms, elements, compounds, the periodic table, and completed several experiments as well.  Even the experiments had their own booklets for recording the process and results.

     Both of the children completed their own lapbook.  The only difference was my daughter did the writing in hers and I wrote out some of the mini books for my son as his writing is still larger and all the information would not have fit in the space provided.

We made one minor change from the set and that was to use a library pocket for the chemistry timeline cards rather than the pocket provided.  If I remember next time I am looking for something to fill my spare time I will make labels for the library pockets that say "Chemistry Timeline". 






In case you are wondering about the pictures, I try not to put pics of my childrens' faces on here simply for safety reasons.  I wanted pictures that were a little different than just laying the lapbook on the table so I had them hold them up in front of their faces. 

The books we used were Fizz, Bubble, Flash from Williamson Kids Can and Chemistry Getting a Big Reaction  by Dan Green and The Periodic Table Elements with Style by Adrian Dingle.  The first book is an overview of the periodic table and has a number of experiments and activities as well as trivia about the elements. The latter two are extremely cute; each element or chemistry item is a character and has their own unique personality.

We really enjoyed completing these lapbooks, as well as many others we have used from In the Hands of a Child and look forward to using even more. In case you are interested in Foundations for Chemistry it is number 1109, but can also be looked up by title at "In the Hands of a Child. "