Mount Madonna Students Build Sweet Periodic Table of Elements

Periodic Table

GaplekNews--One way to get students to remember the Periodic Table of Elements is to turn it into the Periodic Table of Cupcakes.

"These students are learning inorganic chemistry," explains science teacher Lisa Catterall. "They need to memorize the first twenty elements on the table before they can work with reactions and other topics. After they did that, we were discussing a project they do in art where they each make an artistic representation of a single element then put them together, and they just had the idea for the ‘table of cupcakes' themselves. Several of them are very fond of baking."

Each cupcake was frosted and labeled with an abbreviation for a particular element, and then the individual "elements" were assembled into the Periodic Table. Once the display was complete, the students were joined by the rest of the middle and high school for a short quiz on the elements.

Students were divided into teams by grade level, and the teacher called out letters and asked each team representative to identify the correct element associated with that letter. A correct answer resulted in a cupcake.

"We had just had a test on the Periodic Table," explains eighth grader Alyssa Donoghue. "And we decided we wanted to do some project. We brainstormed different ideas. All the planning and gathering materials was challenging – and it was a lot of fun!"  kionrightnow