Learning certain things can be complicated and tedious, and in my experience, especially the latest. I remember, when I was little, that one of my favorite subjects was science and yet, one of the things that cost me the most to learn was the table of elements.
Years later, when I arrived at the university, a funny version of the periodic table came into my hands that would surely have helped me learn them years ago. So when I saw that a mother had built a sinking fleet of periodic items to help her children meet them, I couldn't help going in to see how he had done it and how not to share it with you.
The idea
Karyn Tripp, a mother who teaches her four children at home was faced with the dilemma of how to teach her older children chemistry in the funniest way. So one day watching how they played when the fleet sank came the inspiration, Why not replace the original board with the table of periodic elements? And so he did.
The operation is very similar to sinking the conventional fleet, groups of one, two, three, four and five elements are simply marked in the same way that we would place our ships on the board. The table has also been divided by coordinates having letters on the vertical axis and numbers on the horizontal, so that to shoot we simply have to say the coordinate to which we want to shoot in the same way in which it is done with the original game. The objective of the game is to be the first to find all the elements of your opponent.
According Karyn, it is not necessary to have knowledge of chemistry to play since the idea is that children will familiarize themselves in a fun way with the different elements and know where they are on the table. So by the time they have to study them, the knowledge they acquired without realizing it while playing will come to light.
How to make my own game
It is quite simple. The first thing is to make 4 copies of a periodic table, some clips or office tweezers, some markers and a couple of filing folders (typical of the office).
So that we do not have to be making copies every two by three, we can plasticize the tables so that we can paint on them with slate markers that can then be erased without problem.
I put a video of how everything works
Variations
For older children who have already given chemistry or who are studying the table of elements, we can add the name of the item to the firing order, such as C-6-Chrome, so that the names are left, also once we go forward we can even remove coordinates alphanumeric and simply shoot an element, Example "missile to the Strontium zone"
Other examples
I remember reading a story long ago, of a father who for his children to learn the capitals of the Spanish province, took advantage of his love for football and placed on a map each of the football stadiums that existed in each city with the name of the team they belonged to. Example: La Coruña - Riazor - Deportivo de la Coruña. In this way he managed to get his son to learn the Spanish provincial capitals, at least those that had a football team.
As you have imagined, the idea can also be used for country capitals.
Do you have any similar tricks to facilitate the learning of your children?
