ATOMS AND MOLECULES

This week's lesson can be tricky to teach but even my preschoolers seemed to enjoy their new words they learned. I started with explaining that everything is made of atoms. The children then named one thing they could see that was made of atoms. I told them that atoms were so tiny that we couldn't see them and would have to have a very expensive electron scanning microscope to see them. They named things that they thought were tiny, ant, spiders, salt grains, germs, etc. I explained that the atom was tiny that any of these.

I brought out a tub of sand and asked the kids if they could count all of the grains in the tub. Could they count all of the grains on the beach? Of course not. That would e like counting all of the atoms in their body. Our bodies are made of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Calcium atoms with a Iron. I then gave each child 2 magnetic marbles that are 2 different colors. The yellow one was a proton which is positive. The lack one is a neutron which has no charge. I had a cup of tiny beads which are electrons - negative. I had a poster with a flat bowl in the middle for the nucleus and rings drawn for the orbits. I started with the smallest atom, hydrogen. One child dropped in a hydrogen and I put 1 electron on the shell. I explained that this wasn't a stable happy atom. If you inflated balloons with it, they would float but if they got to hot they would explode into fire balls. That's my hydrogen fuel sends the Space Shuttle into space. Then we added a proton and 2 neutrons and another electron to make helium. This is stable and won't explode if heated. We then made carbon (6 of each), oxygen (8) and calcium (20). I explained that if we made gold we'd have to put 89 of each onto the chart. I also explained that an atom isn't flat but is round and that the electron pop in and out very quickly in their shell. They pop in and out so quickly that they make a shell around the nucleus. This is like fan blades turning so fast that they look solid.

I passed out some Periodic Table of Elements that had pictures of what the elements are used for on it. The charts came from the American Chemical Society. I showed the kids gold and had them find it on the chart, then silver, aluminum, sulphur, iron, bismuth and zinc. The kids had fun pointing to different pictures and asking about them.

I have some magnesium powder purchased at a magic shop and when sprinkled over a candle sparkles. The kids recognized that fireworks are made from elements (atoms).

I then talked about combining 2 different atoms to make a molecule. Water is H20.
2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen atoms. Our breath is a molecule CO2. One carbon and 2 oxygen atoms.

Our last activity was tangling long skinny molecule (polymers) to make slime.

Our project was making an atom hat.