Study of Periodic Table of Elements

This year 2019 is the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements (IYPT). When I planned to introduce the periodic table of elements, I wanted the lesson to be simple, fun, memorable, and understandable as it is important up to high school.

 We cannot learn any subject, if we do not recognize the connection that has in our daily life.  When we started the study of the periodic table, the first think I did was collecting some elements that we use in our daily life.  I started with showing the stuffs that made up of aluminum, silver, gold, and, copper which my daughter is familiar with. After showing these elements in the periodic table, we started to learn the name of other elements. 

A colorful periodic table, simple information cards, and, the elements collected - that’s all; it makes the learning of periodic table fun and hands-on.

Our lesson covered the following,

·        What are elements?

·        Elements that found in our daily life

·        Total elements found so far, and how they are arranged in the periodic table.

·        Major classifications of elements and their properties.

Teaching Algebra using Algebraic Tiles

We have been solving a lot of puzzles like this, which we found in pinterest and face book pages and my little one likes to solve it. It really helped her in learning algebra. 

 I don’t know why we hate algebra, when the pictures are replaced by the alphabets x,y….

 I was thinking about introducing algebraic equations to my daughter and started a conversation like this,

“When I have 2 stamps you have 4,

when I have 3 stamps you have 6,

when I have 4 stamps you have 8,

and when I have 5 stamps you have 10 ….”

She interrupted, “So, I have twice the stamps as that of you”

“Great, if I have x number of stamps, how many will you have? Let us use ‘x’ instead of any particular number. Ok”

“2x” she said.

“If I have x stamps and you have 3 more than that…”

“x+3”

“ if you have 2 fewer than mine”

“mm X-2”

That’s it. Now she knows how to write pre algebraic equation.   I gave these cards which I downloaded from here to arrange the word phrases and the corresponding equations. She enjoyed it.

Once she was good at forming equations, we started a lesson on how to solve it.  I used very simple single order expressions taken from Singapore primary questions.

Algebra tiles are really helpful in the introductory stage and here are two sample problems.

The second problem