Elements are Everything – Atoms, Structure and Form (Liquid, Gas, or Solid) Elements around us, in the Air and water, and in our bodies and everywhere!
Elements are the building blocks of all matter.
MATTER HAS THE MAIN PROPERTIES OF: COLOR, SHAPE, SMELL, TEXTURE, WEIGHT, MALLEABILITY, SURFACE TENSION, SOUND, TEMPERATURE, MAGNETISM, ELASTICITY, COHESION
Everything is made up of atoms of elements and temperature changes their behavior. They tighten together and jiggle when they get cold and when they are hot they move apart quickly and jump around even jumping into the air!
They can have a positive or negative electrical charge and have a center body(nucleus) that is kind of like a little bag of marbles that has different numbers of tiny bodies (electrons) spinning around it. Some are light weights and some are heavy weights! Balloons are filled with helium. It is lighter than anything in our air close to the earth and floats up into the sky.
Children might be familiar with a few elements: oxygen, calcium, sulfur, potassium, magnesium, sodium, hydrogen, iron, nickel, copper, silver, gold, mercury, carbon, aluminum, chlorine, arsenic, tin, lead, iodine, krypton, neon. Show them some samples. Ask children if they can name some of the elements.
Elements are made of atoms that are all alike, one kind of atom, ex. oxygen. When oxygen joins to another kind of atom Hydrogen, it becomes a molecule – 2 different atoms join together to make water – H2O – the Mickey Mouse molecule made of 2 hydrogen’s and 1 oxygen. Point out some of the elements on the chart as they name a few. All of the body needs oxygen to be alive. Our lungs take in air and our red blood cells grab it from the air and carry it off to feed the cells of our body. There are more than 100 elements.
Our body is made mostly of 5 elements: Oxygen 65%, Carbon 17.5%, Hydrogen 10.2%, Nitrogen 2.4%, Calcium 1.6%, others 3.3
The Earth is made mostly of 5 elements: Oxygen 49.5%, Silicon 25.8%, Aluminum 7.5%, Iron 4.7%, Calcium 3.4%, and Others 9.1
The Air close to the earth is mostly 3 elements: Nitrogen 78%, Oxygen 21%, Carbon Dioxide 1%
Materials: Chart of Elements, Molecule of water (the “Mickey Mouse Molecule” is easy to make of paper mache). Samples of elements: silver, gold, tin, iron, copper, helium in balloon, charcoal (carbon), sulfur. Earth, body, and air charts of the elements (pie charts are easy for children to visualize.)Colored marshmallows and toothpicks to make a molecule of water.
Activities: Children act out behavior of atoms. Stand close together and just jiggle (frozen). As molecules heat up they get more active. As they get cold they freeze in place and jiggle. When they melt to liquid they move sliding around. When they heat up they move fast even jumping into the air. Construct a molecule of water using the colored marshmallows. Draw simple pictures of the hydrogen atom. Draw a small ball and fill it in and then draw a tiny ball out from it and a circle going through it showing that the electron circles the larger body in the center (nucleus). This is a simple picture and simple science.
