Elements are the ingredients that make up everything. Do you know where those elements come from? Explaining a concept like nuclear fusion and the creation of all the ingredients of the cosmos might sound a little daunting for a homeschool parent (let alone for the elementary child). However I’m here to tell you it’s not as challenging as it sounds. In fact its a lot of fun.
We’ve dabbled in basic chemistry before–a couple years back. This time I wanted to take it more in-depth. Maria Montessori says when you first approach chemistry with the 6-9 age crowd (second plane child), you should start with water. Remember Montessori work goes from the big scope to the detailed view always. So while most mainstream chemistry curriculums start with the atom, we find it helpful to give the Montessori child an overview of chemistry based on something familiar; they can see a lot of concepts presented in one place and draw their own comparisons and conclusions. We want to inspire the child to think not just give them facts to remember. You can read more about introducing the child to chemistry in Montessori’s From Childhood to Adolescence.
So that was the plan this school year. Yet I recently fell in love with the Gift of the Elements / Stellar Nucleosynthesis work. I kept coming back to it. I couldn’t shake it.
How cool is it to have nuclear fusion materials that are hands on enough to demonstrate the creation of the elements — for elementary-aged kids? Supernova level cool!
So I figured, if we want a truly cosmic presentation of chemistry we will start with the stars. This fits in perfectly with the first Great Lesson.
I presented this lesson a few weeks ago with the help of this presentation guide to the materials by Nurturing to Independence aka Elizabeth Vice (who has a fantastic blog)! I created the materials on my laser cutter, and it took forever. I am hoping to recreate some of the materials to sell perhaps in a smaller scale version. I’ve been thinking on it. Felt is the recommended medium, but I hate lasering felt because its stinks.
The kids are overdue a follow-up presentation on the Gifts of the Elements, but I’ll post recommended resources now from what we’ve already done.
For the presentation guide itself, I love the one I mentioned above, but Alison’s has a free version you can view here from their geology manual.
We also used the 4 part cards from the Learning Ark.
Some action shots:
I also used the Waseca energy readers (my referral link, save $15) since the purple level ones cover the star cycle. The kids love these readers.
Two videos we watched:
A look at a supernova explosion:
https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/00000160-e0ea-d22c-a568-e4fedcd60000
Where does gold come from? https://ed.ted.com/lessons/where-does-gold-come-from-david-lunney#review
We also had an introduction to the states of matter. There’s an episode of Magic School Bus Rides Again on Netflix that covers the three states of matter very well at a basic level.
I had the kids use their Spielgabon kit to illustrate the properties of the different states of matter at the particle level. We acted it out too by bumping into one another and pretending to float around. It was a gas. Womp womp.
Now I think it’s important to note that the Sun and stars are almost all made of plasma, the fourth state of matter. In fact plasma is the most common state in the universe (or so I’ve read). Yet I had the hardest time finding resources for elementary kids on plasma. So I made some. Montessori kids aren’t scared of big topics!
“What is Plasma?” is a reader that goes into just the basics of this state of matter. It’s most appropriate for six to nine-year-olds, but my older kids read it and learned about plasma too. It’s formatted so you just print, cut, fold and staple. I’m kind of proud that I figured out how to do that!
I made 3 and 4 part cards with examples of plasma. I’m going to have a whole set with all the states of matter and sorting activity up soon.
I really recommend introducing your young kids to all four states. It’s not complicated and will serve them well down the road.
We also had a basic introduction to density. I love those activities where you layer oil and water and all that good stuff, but I hate how messy it is to have out on the shelves. So I was excited to use this density kit from Educational Innovations. Plus we will use it again next week to go farther in-depth at the molecular level.
We of course did some learning about the Sun itself. We’ve done this a few years in a row, so this shelf work wasn’t super popular (not new / too easy). I have “layers of the sun” 3 part cards from Montessori Print Shop that we used. I also downloaded this worksheet from Samson’s Shoppe for review. The kids did a great job.
Here’s Josie’s paper:
Here are the books we read (part of our much bigger overall list of recommended books we’ve read so far):
We are definitely revisiting the Gift of the Elements presentation again in the upcoming week. We dove head-first into a ton of extremely cool extensions in the meantime. Chemistry is super popular here right now. I’ll update with a ton of resources for those soonish. I have some lifecycle of a star grammar, reading (something really unique and fun I hope to get uploaded this weekend to my TPT) and some art work to share too. So much to do and so little time with five kiddos.
