Periodic Table

We're currently working our way through Chapter 4 of the American Chemical Society's middle school chemistry curriculum. Most recently, we did this activity matching elements with their symbols and with their numbers of protons, neutrons and electrons:

I sure did wish I had a laminator. I used packing tape to reinforce every single one of those cards!! The cards say things like, "The atom you are looking for has 3 more electrons than carbon." Or, "The atom you are looking for has about 16 neutrons." Students need to understand atomic number and atomic mass in order to figure out what those numbers are and what they mean. The elements table in front of Mane had places for her to fill in the blanks with numbers of protons, neutrons, and electrons based on atomic number and atomic mass.