My fourteen year old daughter has been working through the Middle School Chemistry course available online from the American Chemical Society. She was working on a section featuring Ionic Bonding. It’s a pretty good little program with multimedia and experiments or activities for almost every lesson. Because we do a lot of Science at our house, we’ve covered some of this before, so we tend to mix it up and expand a little bit sometimes. We also have a membership over at the Happy Scientist which we use to supplement when we can. Nothing over there on ionic bonding specifically, but there’s some simpler stuff about molecules if you need it.
One of the activities was to make molecule models, one of NaCl, and one of CACl2. These are usually made with styrofoam balls and toothpicks. Last time we did a molecule unit, we used gum drops, because we are simply not a styrofoam ball sort of family. We didn’t have any gumdrops on hand, so my daughter used fondant to make her models. She dyed the fondant various colors to represent different elements. Green for Sodium, Yellow for Calcium, and Blue for Chlorine. You can make your own color choices when you make your own.
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| Top: NaCl Bottom: CaCl2 |
And then she ate them. . .
Fondant is fairly good for molecule modeling. You can dye it with food color and it’s reasonably easy to make, at least by the recipe in our gingerbread book. Here’s a Similar Fondant Recipe. A lot of sites have crazy looking recipes that do indeed look difficult. I’d avoid them and stick with the simple version. NB: Don’t substitute margarine for the butter. It will make the fondant clay too soft. For an edible clay that dries harder and can be kept longer, use Pastillage or Marzipan.
If you really don’t want to make sugar clay, you can buy it:
Wilton makes pre-colored fondant, but it’s even more expensive than this 2lb tub.
Premade marzipan is also available, but also is expensive.
Gumdrops also make fine molecules. Buy large and small size for best effect.
The best thing about these edible clay/candy options is that you don’t have to worry about storing or disposing of them after the lesson is done!
that we’ve found very helpful over the years. Looking over it, I see the two major categories are art and craft supplies and scientific paraphernalia. There are a few musical items, and I also added in a collection of DVDs of ballet and opera that’s appropriate for children. These are things that we’ve had and used and enjoyed. These are only suggestions! Your kids aren’t mine; your house and homeschool might be larger/smaller/different. Today I’ll do Scientific supplies that we’ve found useful. You can click through on the pictures below for more info since I embedded them Amazon Affiliate style.
We are all about “hands-on = brains-on” science here, too, with nary a science curriculum in sight (of my kids, at least – I have one on the shelf for reference!)
So glad you found my blog so I could find yours; I look forward to getting caught up!
I am very much enjoying your blog and the other great homeschooling blogs I’ve found recently. Google+ seems to have a lot of homeschoolers too!
You know, I have to tell you that the one similar thread I see in all of my favorite home school blog sites is the above-average intelligence of the ‘teachers’ IE parents. My children were school taught. They did all right, though I wish I knew then what I know now about home schooling. But now, my daughter, worried about my crumbling brain (her words, not mine) has bought me mind-exercising games so that I won’t slide into Alzheimer’s or some other brain-degenerating condition. My point is: If I had done home school with my children, I would have kept learning and growing. Like all of you ‘teachers’. It really is noticeable to those of us with our faces pressed against the glass. I mean it when I say that you are an example to us all. One we wish we could emulate.
Can’t wait to check out that book!
Our secular homeschool co-op has had a Science class, and it has been such a downer for my science-loving younger one, who wants to DO and experiment, not read and repeat information. Meanwhile she is all but tearing the house apart because she’s not waiting for permission to be a chemist or an engineer.
The thing I love about “9 Crazy Ideas” is that it does a pretty good job of explaining scientific method. It really pushes the critical thinking skills. Besides covering the concept of falsifiable, it also gets into researcher trust and bias, all while being highly engaging and fun.
The reasons you stated are why I have such a difficult time finding history books. Most of them suck all the joy out of a subject that is truly fascinating if done correctly. Back to science: I just received The Story of Science by Joy Hakim and I can’t wait to dig in. If it lives up to its reputation it will be a wonderful resource for our homeschool.
Interesting…that’s what my 13yr old daughter is finding with maths – the more you specialize, the more engaging it gets.
We are sticking to Citizen Science Work. Its good field work and it’s all hands-on. So it’s always fun, and a bit of an adventure, and we keep scrap books and journals of our work so we always have something to show for it. Because just as you said, finding good secular HS Science material is not easy. *sigh*