My Life. In Pictures. Session 2 - Day One: Summer Fun - Chemistry Games

Amber at Everything Except the Grill has posted a photography challenge. Something for everyday of the week. Each day she has a photography challenge for us. Here are the list of challenges below. It will run from August 3 to August 7th.

• Monday – Summer Fun
• Tuesday - A Favorite
• Wednesday - Out and About (anywhere but home)
• Thursday- Something you are proud of
• Friday- Something or someone in black and white

Monday Challenge: Summer Fun

Our Summer Fun at this time of year is actually School! I know, I know that is No Fun! Well it can be. We are studying Chemistry and in order to help the boys learn about the elements I have found a number of games for free online. That makes Chemistry more fun.

One of the best sites for finding science games for free is Ellen McHenry's Basement Workshop. I downloaded and we played Quick Six and the boys love it. We played long enough to do all the clues she had on the sheet and then to finish the round we were on we started the clues over again. No prior knowledge of chemistry is needed and that makes it good because we are just starting chemistry and the boys don't know much.

Beside the pdf from her site you need a periodic table that has the elements listed/coded by color in these categories:

Alkali metals	Alkaline earths	Lanthanide	Actinides	Transition metals
Poor metals	Metalloids	Nonmetals	Halogens	Noble gases

The colors do not have to be the same as the ones used above that is just to give you the categories you need to have. There are lots of these online: just do a Google image search on periodic table of elements and you will find many to choose from.


Here are some pictures of the boys cutting out the cards and of us playing the game.























Ellen has other games on her site that we will be playing in the coming weeks and months. The Periodic Table Game looks fun and we will probably play that one soon. The Organic Molecules card game will be left for later when we get to organic chemistry. There is also a Make Five game which is about the minerals of the earth but also has the chemical formulas on it and we are going to play that one too.


There is also the What's the Matter? A Chemistry Clue Game. This game is from a different source and not as well planned as Ellen's games. We have not played this yet. I had to print the game board on cardstock in pieces to make it big enough to play. In Adobe Reader I increased the % of view of the page to 100% then printed the game in 6 sections by moving the scroll bars and then when printing I choose: print range, current view. I printed top right, top left, middle right, middle left, bottom right, bottom left. Then you can trim and glue the pieces together. I have not finished making mine yet, but plan to glue it to some posterboard and then laminate it. I am not sure of the playing of this game. I am not sure if the teacher or students are supposed to make up additional cards and clues or what. It is not very clear. Maybe playing it will make it more clear. Leave me a comment if you print and play this game and figure it out before me.

So that is some of the "Summer Fun" we have been having lately.
How about you. Want to join in?? Click on the My Life. In Pictures. button below for details of how to join us. There is a new topic each day this week so if you want to do the Summer Fun topic that is for today only. Join us. or click the button to read the other posts about Summer Fun. Have a Great Week,
Have some Summer Fun with you kids,
Debbie