It's Elemental, My Dear Alchemist!

What does this picture look like to you? It may appear at first glance to merely be some little colored circles, but it turns out that they are instead the building blocks of nature!

Simon has lately transferred his interest in the planets to an interest in the chemical elements. We've been learning what different things are made of and put up a poster of the periodic table for him.

The other day we were at a craft store to buy some materials for me to make some dice towers (another story) and we found some Shrinky Dink paper. It was a set of blank sheets that you could color anything you want on. I described for him what you could do with Shrinky Dinks and told him he could make whatever he wanted. So, he decided to make a set of atoms.

The blue circles in the picture are Hydrogen atoms, the red circles are oxygen atoms and the large gray circles are iron atoms. He looked up their relative sizes on the periodic table so that they would be roughly correct in proportion to one another. Then he spent all afternoon playing with them in different combinations. He put one oxygen and two hydrogens together to make water. Then he'd put the oxygen together with the iron to make rust (iron oxide). Then he put them all together and said: "Daddy, guess what this makes!" When I said "I don't know" he told me. It turns out that when you combine iron, hydrogen and oxygen you get "wet rust".

The funny thing is, none of this was our idea. It's not like we woke up one day and said: "Let's teach the boy chemistry." He decided to do this all on his own. All I did was color in the iron atoms and bake the Shrinky Dinks. I guess we need more Shrinky Dink material so he can make carbon and gold. I don't know why he wants to make gold, but I have no desire to squash his interest in alchemy. Maybe we'll buy him a bunch of real lead to experiment with and see what he can do. This little fellow's going to be a gold mine!

There's a definite trend with way Simon gets interested in and immerses himself in a given subject. Whether its stars or planets or cartoon characters or now the elements, he always does the same things. He draws pictures of them over and over again, which I cut out. Then he carries them around with us wherever we go and they become his imaginary friends. He personifies them, talks to them and has them talk to each other. He has this really cool combination of scientific curiosity combined with a deep emotional attachment. The other day he said: "Daddy, I wish the planets could really talk to me. Where can we go to talk to the planets?" When I told him that planets couldn't really talk to us he actually cried a bit and I had to console him. I think he decided to forget that conversation, though. Within a day he was right back playing with and talking to stars, planets, care bears and now the elements.

Next I want to order us a copy of the card game Elementeo. It's a two player game designed and marketed by a high school student. In it you have cards representing different elements and you combine them together to blow up your opponent. Very cool!

Finally, here's a picture of Simon relaxing with his favorite Curious George PS2 game with Gwen advising him on how to get through the tricky bits. It's good to relax with a good game after an afternoon of building wet rust.