Chemistry: Eating It All Up - Providing Students with the Knowledge and Opportunity to Experience Chemistry Everyday

Chemistry can be a tough subject for anyone to grasp, especially children. In order for concepts to be understood and mastered, the lessons must be fun and engaging.  Providing definitions and facts in a lecture is not the key to student comprehension. This unit is intended to support and enhance the School District of Philadelphia’s fourth grade Science Core Curriculum through engaging, hands-on, and cooperative lessons. Throughout the unit, students will explore chemistry concepts with activities that incorporate food and other household items with a combination of cooperative learning and individual responses.

This unit consists of nine lessons that address common misconceptions that students have about chemistry and introduce it in a way that makes connections to their every day experiences. The unit begins with a basic introduction to chemistry and each lesson is designed to build on the previous lesson as the unit progresses. Students are encouraged to bring awareness to the chemistry around them all of the time. Through this unit, I hope to enable students to use the experiences they have had with chemistry and food and apply it to their future science endeavors. I hope they will continue to ask questions, make observations, and notice connections between science and every day life.