Teaching Chemistry with Toys: Activities for Grades K-9

Rating:
Summary: Don't Pay Attention to What Grades This Book Is For!
Review: O.K. I'll begin by confessing that I am a middle school teacher who participated in one of the NSF funded summer Institutes for Chemical Education. So, I already had the pleasure of working with and learning from two of the authors, Jerry and Mickey Sarquis. I would not have expected anything less than a 5-star professional resource from them. This book is a gem. It offers 42 activities, evenly distributed among K-3, 4-6, and 7-9. However, those categories meant little to my students or me. We loved them all. Of course, I might have changed an activity title like "Twirly Whirly Milk" to something that was more "8th gradish" and added a question or two to the accompanying handout, but what is important is that my students enjoyed the activities and thought about science as a result of doing them.

The activities all include the following well developed sections: key science topics, key process skills, time required, materials - for getting ready - for introducing the activity - for the procedure - for variations and extensions, safety and disposal, getting ready, introducing the activity, procedure, variations and extensions, explanation, assessment options, cross-curricular integration, and some of the activities also have hand-out masters. (I almost rated the book only 4 stars because I would have liked handouts for each activity, but the assessment sectionss offer the teacher many creative options. So, you'll have to think a little. What else is new?)

(1) Unfixed and Fixed Shapes (2) Crystal Pictures (3) Crayon Prints from a Change of State (4) Smell-Good Diffusion Ornaments (5) Smelly Balloons (6) The Scratch-and-Sniff Challenge (7) Density Batons (8) Clay Boats (9) Are Mittens Warm? (10) Magic Worms (11) Fortune-Telling Fish (12) Paint with Water Books (13) Weather Bunnies (14) Twirly Whirly Milk (15) Temperature Mixing (16) Under Pressure (17) Water Fountain in a Jar (18) The Amazing Balloon Pump (19) Pencil Hydrometers (20) Plastics Do Differ! (21) Shape Shifters (22) Pop the Hood (23) Things that Glow in the Dark (24) A Collection of Surface Tension Activities (25) One-Way Screen (26) Mysterious Sand (27) Sumi Nagashi (28) Chromatography Color Burst (29) Properties of Silly Putty (30) Marshmallow in a Syringe (31) Liquid to Gas in a "Flick" (32) Salt Solutions and Grow Creatures (33) The Liquid Timer Race (34) Density Bottles (35) Frustration Bottles (36) Expanding, Floating Bubbles (37) Hats Off to the Drinking Bird (38) Heat Solution TM (39) Color-Changing Cars (40) Investigating the Effect of Temperature on Lightsticks (41) Experimenting with Light-Sensitive Paper (42) The Diving Whale