Homeschool Science: Periodic Table of the Elements Resources

Quick Pick Six Elements with my ten-year-old. I miss those long-ago days of literally homeschooling around our big family room table!

Throughout our entire homeschooling journey, I always LOVED studying the Periodic Table of the Elements with the kids. And tbh, I don't know if we came back to it so often because it was really always coming up in our studies... or because I was always making an excuse to come back to it!

For instance, in that same homeschool year as the photo above, we studied the Periodic Table of the Elements as part of a chemistry unit, a geology unit, and a history of science study. We came back to it over the years every time studied biology, every time we studied geology, that one time that we did the history of science study... and this last homeschool year, my high school Senior and I took one last spin through the Periodic Table as part of her Honors Chemistry lab science.

You won't be surprised, then, to learn that I've amassed a lot of resources relating to the Periodic Table of the Elements. Here are some that we've used over the years:

We have worked this PTOE puzzle SO many times!

• Quick Pick Six Elements. I printed the playing cards on card stock and the kids colored them; I don't usually put that much effort into a handmade material, but we have used the snot out of this game! There are some other element flash cards that are already colored in available here.
• Interactive Periodic Table of the Elements. Click on one of the elements, and you can see images and descriptions. It's probably better for younger kids. This interactive Periodic Table of the Elements is better for older students.
• Periodic Table of Mistakes. After your kids have learned how the Periodic Table is organized, present them with this and see if they can spot all of the mistakes!
• PTOE Cookies. You know how we love baking delicious things for school! I really want to make cookies or cupcakes of the entire Periodic Table.
• Element Collection. How large of a collection can you accrue? I also think it would be fun to organize this as a scavenger hunt--how many elements do you already own?
• Lewis Dot Diagram of the Elements. Try this one instead of your standard Periodic Table.
• Build a Periodic Table of the Elements. Here's a big project for the semester--build your own wall-sized Periodic Table! If you don't need as much hand-holding, here's a free download that shows you how to set up this assignment.
• Egg Carton Periodic Table. Make your own Periodic Table of the Elements out of egg cartons.
• Periodic Table of Videos. TED-Ed has a lesson for every element in the Periodic Table.
• Cartoon Elements. Need your elements anthropomorphized? Here you go!
• PTOE Battleship. Here's a great way to get kids comfortable with pronouncing (or trying to pronounce!) the names of the elements.
• Periodic Table of the Elements Lapbook. My kids never got into lapbooks, although I do sometimes have them complete some of the smaller elements to include in the notebooks that they do keep.
• Chemical Element Trump Cards. Here's another card game, this one available as a free download.
• Element Coloring Pages. You can only get a few of the pages for free, but if your kiddo enjoys them, you could buy the book!
• Montessori Three-Part Cards of the Elements. A Montessori kid would adore these.
• Blank Table. Why not just write in your own?
• Cross-stitch Elements. This probably isn't for the kids, but I now deeply desire to make an entire cross-stitch Periodic Table of the Elements. Or maybe Perler beads?
• Cheater quilt. You can print the table, itself, onto quilting cotton via Spoonflower, and then sew it yourself, or use it as a beginner sewing project to do with the kids. Kids love hand-quilting! This one, on the other hand, is more of a patchwork sewing project, but you lose the element info. 
• Poster. We have always LOVED our large-format anchor charts over here. The bigger they are, the more room the kids have to draw and glue things all over them!

We also watch a lot of YouTube videos when we study something. When the kids were little I pre-screened videos before I watched with them, but I always had several go-to sources that I knew would be good. You might want to add these to your Watch List sooner rather than later, because you know how things are with YouTube--today's video is tomorrow's static!

And here are our FAVORITE favorite resources--THE BOOKS!!!!!!!!!

• The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Elements
• The Disappearing Spoon
• The Stardust That Made Us
• The Periodic Table: A Visual Guide to the Elements
• The Secret Life of the Periodic Table
• The Periodic Table: Elements with Style
• The Elements Book: A Visual Encyclopedia of the Periodic Table

Although all my kids are officially done with all of their homeschool studies as of this week, you're probably still going to find me doing my own little PTOE crafts now and then. I want to find a way to make a Periodic Table quilt that is both patchwork AND has the info for each element, for instance... I guess when both the kids go off to college in the fall, my partner and I can spend our lonely evenings designing element quilt blocks for Spoonflower to print for me!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

How to Make the Easiest Upcycled Cardboard Building Set

 

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World.

This upcycled cardboard building set is a terrific open-ended toy that won’t cost you a cent!

If you’ve ever seen a kid with a handful of LEGOs, you know how wonderful open-ended building toys are. They let kids exercise their creativity, build their problem-solving skills, strengthen math and physics concepts–and keep themselves entertained for ages, too! Open-ended toys have a lot more extended play-value than toys that have a single purpose (and a lot LOT more play-value than noisy, light-up toys!).

This particular upcycled cardboard building set is as open-ended as they come. You can create the pieces in any shape you can imagine, connect them in a myriad of ways, and even paint or decorate them however you’d like. And the best part is that as long as you have a piece of corrugated cardboard in your recycling bin, you can expand on your building set forever.! Tbh, creating the set is as fun as building with it!

Here’s how to make the quickest, easiest, and SUPER fun upcycled cardboard building set:

To make this building set: you will need:

• corrugated cardboard. Thin cardboard won’t work for this project, but pretty much any corrugated cardboard will. If you’re short on corrugated cardboard, check your local recycling center or ask around your friend group for shipping boxes.
• scissors. Cutting corrugated cardboard does take hand muscles, but larger scissors make it easier. If you’re making this project with younger kids, let them draw the pieces they want onto the cardboard, and then you can do the tough job of cutting them out. If kids are a little older, though, give them a go at cutting the cardboard themselves–it’s tough, sure, but it builds the hand muscles they need for writing by hand and other fine motor activities.
• tools for embellishment (optional). I really like the look of these plain, but with paint, markers, or stickers, you can add variety and creative inspiration. Googly eyes are always fun, as are pieces painted in a rainbow of colors. Use your imagination to make the cardboard building set of your dreams!

Step 1: Draw templates (optional), and cut the cardboard into shapes.

I’m a little obsessed with geometric shapes, but you can cut your corrugated cardboard pieces however you like. If you’re making a basic set for a kid, a variety of geometric shapes, along with some free-formed, more abstract pieces, will give them a good starting place.

If you’re making a set WITH a kid, however, my favorite technique is to encourage the kid to draw or cut any fun shape their heart desires, modeling a few ideas for them, perhaps, to give them the idea. While they’re being creative, I’ll cut out those same boring geometric shapes (I’m obsessed!) so that they’ve got some basic pieces to work with, as well.

Step 2: Cut notches in the cardboard pieces.

Cut a thin notches in the cardboard pieces wherever you’d like them to connect. Longer notches will hold the connections more firmly, but you don’t need the notches to go more than 1/4 or 1/3 of the way through the piece.

Cutting notches is a little easier than cutting out the pieces, so if you’ve got a kid who’s on the cusp of being able to cut the corrugated cardboard, this is a doable activity to help build their hand strength.

This is also a great place to add to the interest of the set. Finding unusual places to cut notches encourages kids to make more creative connections.

To play with this toy, simply connect the notches and start building!

I think kids have the best time when they can follow their own interests and imaginations, but you can sneak in some STEM problem-solving by offering up challenges. What is the tallest tower you can build? What is the longest bridge you can build between two chair backs? Can you build a square shape using only circle pieces? Try building a cat!

Cheap, accessible toys like these are especially important to have out in the world, because they build equity. The local underfunded childcare center probably doesn’t have fancy Magna-Tiles, and heck, even Duplos are ridiculously expensive these days, but anyone can make and donate a huge set of the most beautiful cardboard building toys with some time and patience.

And homemade toys like that are important for every kid to have, even if their parents can afford the bougie stuff. Maybe it’s the pre-Christmas anti-consumerist crankiness starting in me already, but I think it’s crucial for every kid to learn that some of the best toys are both handmade and free. I mean, I love all those fancy, expensive natural wood toys as much as the next crunchy mom (ask me about my Waldorf toy obsession anytime!), but you know what’s nearly as natural, and even more free, than that?

CARDBOARD, that’s what!

Every Council's Own Girl Scout Fun Patch Program That Your Girl Scouts Can Earn from Anywhere: Technology, Engineering, and Math

Welcome back to my series in which I am listing, week by week, topic by topic, every single Council's Own Girl Scout fun patch program that your Girl Scouts can earn from everywhere!

My Girl Scout troop enjoys earning Council's Own fun patches, as well as official badges and retired badges. I usually look for a fun patch that they can earn in addition to a badge whenever we're planning a big project or a trip, etc. This list is essentially just my own research written down for easy reference.

This week's category: Technology, Engineering, and Math! Y'all, Girl Scouts apparently LOVE their STEM fun patches! I separated the science into its own category and this list is still super long. My favorite fun patches here are the couple of math ones, as even with the current STEM craze math still has a bad reputation, and math is still a subject not overtly reflected in Girl Scout badges or most of the other fun patch programs. I think that when people are tasked with creating a STEM fun patch, they often go to the easy, accessible topics and stay there--you'll see below numerous fun patch programs with a similar content area. But it's certainly possible to have a topic that so easily accessible that it will eventually be overused, and it'll then get boring for kids. I cannot even tell you, for instance, how many times my kids have separated out the DNA from a banana (always into a tiny potion bottle with a cord so they can wear it around their necks), catalyzed hydrogen peroxide and called it "elephant's toothpaste," or ran a Beebot through a maze. 

ANYWAY, you don't have to confine yourself to just the easy, most accessible STEM topics. Find a fun patch program that speaks to your kids from this list, and use to to stretch their skills and their imaginations... and do some math!

For this list, I only included fun patch programs that fit the following criteria:

1. Girl Scouts can earn this fun patch wherever they are. I did not include any fun patch programs that have site-specific criteria, unless I felt that those criteria would be easy to substitute and still maintain the point of the fun patch program. I also didn't include fun patch programs that require time-specific criteria that have already passed, such as patches programs designed for the 2020 COVID lockdowns. I noted in the description of each patch when substitutions would be required.
2. Girl Scouts can obtain the council's requirements to earn this fun patch. I found several instances in which the council still sells a specific fun patch, but has deleted all the requirements from its website. If I couldn't find an easy link to those requirements from another site, I did not include the patch.
3. Girl Scouts can obtain the physical fun patch. There were also several instances in which councils still host the requirements for a fun patch program, but no longer sell the patch (or, as in the case of a few GSAK patches, they have fewer than ten remaining). If it is unlikely for a Girl Scout to be able to obtain the fun patch, I did not include it. The link to purchase each fun patch is in the caption for its graphic.

TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, AND MATH

Backyard STEM and Beyond

Backyard STEM and Beyond, GSAK. Complete these simple outdoor STEM activities to earn this fun patch. This is a good fun patch program to encourage a troop to have outdoor experiences during their regular meetings.

Brighter Together GSAK

Brighter Together, Girl Scouts of Alaska. Use STEM activities to build and grow social-emotional connections. 

Building Possibilities GSGWM

Building Possibilities, Girl Scouts of the Green and White Mountains. Explore engineering through hands-on activities.

Engineering GSNETX

Engineering, Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas. Try engineering activities and learn about careers in engineering.

Explore STEM GSCCC

Explore STEM, Girl Scout Council of the Colonial Coast. Try fun activities in the four STEM fields. 

Girls Code GSAK

Girls Code, Girl Scouts of Alaska. Complete a variety of programming activities to earn this fun patch. This fun patch program pairs well with the Think Like a Programmer Journeys. It would be a good option for a Girl Scout who completes some of the Journey activities but does not do a TAP.

Math GSNETX

Math, Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas. Try math activities and learn about careers in mathematics.

Math Mania GSAK

Math Mania, Girl Scouts of Alaska. Try out games and activities that let you have fun using math. 

Mining in Today's World GSSN

Mining in Today's World, Girl Scouts of the Sierra Nevada. Learn about the mining industry. 

STEM GSEWNI

STEM, Girl Scouts of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho. Complete simple activities in different STEM fields. 

STEM and Coding GSAK

STEM and Coding, Girl Scouts of Alaska. Try a variety of STEM activities to earn this fun patch. This fun patch program pairs well with any of the STEM badges. It's a good one for a younger Girl Scout troop to earn while planning for or earning their first STEM badge.

STEM Connections GSAK

STEM Connections, Girl Scouts of Alaska. Complete a variety of activities that demonstrate how the fields of STEM connect to other areas of life. This fun patch program pairs well with any of the STEM badges and Journeys.

STEAM Dreamers GSBDC

STEAM Dreamers, Girl Scouts of Black Diamond Council. Have one meeting a year completely taken care of by earning this monthly STEAM fun patch! Older Girl Scouts will likely want to modify or substitute some of the activities to add rigor. Request the patch program materials here.

STEM Explorer, GSC

STEM Explorer, Girl Scouts of Citrus. Complete activities from a checklist to try out different STEM skills. This is a great fun patch program for Girl Scouts to complete independently.

STEMing Daisies GSSS

STEMing Daisies, Girl Scouts of Silver Sage. Daisies earn this fun patch by trying out simple and fun STEM activities. This fun patch program pairs well with any of the Daisy STEM badges. It's a good patch program for Daisies to try to help them decide when STEM badge they want to earn first.

STEMtastic GSSS

STEMtastic, Girl Scouts of Silver Sage. Try out a variety of different activities while learning about some of the fields of STEM. This fun patch program pairs well with any of the STEM badges. It's a good fun patch program to earn to help a troop decide what STEM badge they'd like to pursue.

Here's a look at my complete fun patch series:

• Arts and Crafts
• Culture, Diversity, and Equity
• Games and Sports
• Geography/History
• Outdoors
• Practical Life Skills
• Reading and Writing
• Science
• Service Learning
• Social-Emotional Skills
• Technology, Engineering, and Math

Follow my Craft Knife Facebook page for more Girl Scout resources as I exhaustively compile them!

Homeschool Chemistry of Cooking: Gelation and Spherification

 

Gelling and spherification are good hands-on activities when you're studying proteins, as it's the unfolding of proteins that allows the hydrophobic amino acids to cross-link and form a gel.

You can even look up the exact amino acids that make up the gelatin (probably glycine), and you can model those amino acids. You can also chemically test foods for proteins, if you want to make your study as hands-on and context-building as possible.

Syd and I have been working through this Harvard EdX class, Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science, and that's where we learned how spherification works. When cooking, you gotta love your polymers!  

Although the process that Syd and I used does result in spherified liquids, this isn't exactly the type of spherification that occurs in fancy molecular gastronomy restaurants. There, they use alginate and calcium to build that gel layer only around the outside of what they want spherified, leaving the inside as liquid.

These gel spheres are a solution of liquid and gelatin, and we used physical processes to shape them. 

Syd and I found a really easy-to-follow recipe for making edible spheres in The Complete Cookbook for Young Scientists, written by America's Test Kitchen, but they've actually also put the complete recipe here. It involves lots of fun stuff, like nuking pomegranate juice and unflavored gelatin--

--whisking it (tiny whisk optional but encouraged!)--

--prepping some VERY cold vegetable oil--

--and using a squeeze bottle to drop the solution into the cold oil:

Rinse the oil off, and you've got tiny, edible spheres of pomegranate gelatin!

The process IS very interesting, but alas, Syd and I both thought that the edible spheres were super gross. We never did get every minute speck of oil rinsed away, so they definitely felt oily, and they'd lost a lot of sweetness, as well. 

If you ever could get all the oil rinsed off, I think that these edible spheres would be fun as ice cream toppers, or even as a boba substitute in tea. For us, though, we marveled at our cross-linked polymer chains enabled by the heat-activated unfolding of proteins to reveal the hydrophobic amino acid components...

... and then we fed them to the chickens.

DIY Robotic Arms for the Girl Scout Senior and Ambassador Programming Robots Badges

 

Step 2 of the Girl Scout Senior Programming Robots badge asks the kid to build a robot arm. Step 2 of the Ambassador Programming Robots badge asks the kid to build a motorized robot.

Let's streamline the process of mentoring a Girl Scout Senior and Girl Scout Ambassador through earning this badge together by asking them each to build a motorized robotic arm!

Each kid built her own OWI Robotic Arm Edge kit, obtained via a grant from the Civil Air Patrol.

You guys, these kits were TOUGH!!! I would consider both my kids adept at reading and following step-by-step directions, possibly even a little more adept than your average teenagers, just because we do a lot of step-by-step tutorials and crafts and hands-on activities in our homeschool.  But they both struggled quite a bit with these robotic arm kits, and each made several mistakes that they had to go back and troubleshoot. 

The older kid wasn't quite as careful as her sister, and she even managed to break a couple of pieces--she stripped a screw that she really needed to be able to unscrew to get back into the plastic casing to see what she'd done wrong (she'd put a piece of the motor on backwards), and she accidentally pulled a wire off of its connection. That one, at least, was an excellent learning opportunity, as it then became the first time she ever stripped wires and soldered them to their connection:

It was VERY satisfying when the motor then worked perfectly!

Other than the couple of times they got stuck (and thank goodness their grandfather happened to be visiting, because he had the patience both to compare every step of the instructions to their work to find the mistakes, and to sometimes disassemble the robotic arm back to that step so they could try it again), they mostly worked peacefully while we listened to podcasts together. We got through the entire 36 Questions podcast while DIYing robotic arms!

Finally, all you have to do is assemble the battery case and add SO MANY BATTERIES--

--and then you've got a fully functional robotic arm all of your very own!

You can see in this photo how a little hot glue was also required. The older kid was so rough on her poor robotic arm!

These robotic arms have already come in handy for more than just earning Step 2 of the Programming Robots badge. The older kid is at work on the Ambassador Designing Robots badge, and used her robotic arm, along with some of the hydraulics that were last used building a cardboard robotic arm the last time the kids earned the Programming Robots badge at the Cadette and Senior levels to make a working model of a robot that could dispense a drink into a cup. 

The kids will soon have yet another use for their robotic arms, as well, as for Step 5 of this badge, they'll each be using the USB Interface Kit to write a program for their robotic arm. So it's a good thing that they got their robotic arms working... even if it did require a bit more hot glue and duct tape than I'd been expecting!

P.S. Want to know more about all the weird math I have my kids do, as well as our other wanderings and wonderings? Check out my Facebook page!

Earning the Girl Scout CSA Think Like a Programmer Journey (with Actual Programming!)

 

None of my Girl Scouts, including my own kids--and especially including me!--have ever been super enthused by the Girl Scout Journeys. Some are definitely better than others, and Will, who's obsessed with earning badges and awards, always completes the three Journeys needed to Summit at every level, but I'm not gonna lie--my favorite thing about the Think Like a Programmer Journey is how fairly quick and straightforward it was.

Technically, you can complete the Think Like a Programmer Journey without touching a computer, as its focus is on teaching the process of computational thinking that programmers use, not on actually, literally programming. But incorporating actual, literal programming made the Journey a LOT more interesting to the kids, and added additional STEM enrichment into our school days.

As the intro to the Journey, we watched this Code.org video about how computers organize, process, and represent information:

We discussed a couple of ideas related to this video: 1) the importance of programming solutions that are workable and understandable to the user (not just the programmer), and 2) computational thinking as a method of problem-solving that breaks down problems to manageable bits and works towards solutions that are beneficial to the user--not just the programmer!

These ideas are applicable to Girl Scouts in a lot of ways, particularly in the ways that we try to be of service. Because Girl Scouts often requires Girl Scouts to create and enact service projects in order to earn awards--or even badges, sometimes!--it can be VERY tempting to get some of these service projects done in ways that are expedient for the Girl Scouts, and not necessarily in ways that best serve the beneficiaries. It never hurts, then, to have a reminder that the beneficiaries of our projects are the ones who need to be able to understand and work with our solutions--and in a real way, not just the kind of surface level that could earn a kid a Journey but that we all know good and well isn't going to result in any kind of lasting change for the better.

To that end, the kids started a working doc in which they practiced coming up with needs/problems and proposed solutions for various user groups. They worked in the document periodically throughout this Journey, and if you read down their lists you can actually see them begin to be more thoughtful and detailed, and to think more deeply and specifically about the real needs and problems of their user groups. 

I'd actually anticipated that something on this list would eventually inspire their TAP, but nope! If only life/Girl Scouts was that easy!

On another day, the kids and I explored how language choice affects the value of a solution. Fortunately, I've been telling the kids for their entire lives (usually after they've smugly corrected someone's grammar, but sometimes right before I correct their own grammar, ahem) that "effective communication is good communication." In other words, if you get your point across, that's good communication, whether you've gotten your point across using invented spelling because you're newly literate or lots of gestures combined with a very limited vocabulary because you're in Quebec trying out your Parisian French 101 on a French-Canadian hotel clerk.

Ahem.

The point is that a programmer is in charge of figuring out the most effective way to organize and represent knowledge and information, and any method of effective communication is fair game. 

To practice this, the kids tried out the Representing the Alphabet Activity for the CSA Think Like a Programmer Journey in the Volunteer Toolkit. 

I wouldn't usually do all this printing and cutting for a single activity, and I did think about trying to substitute LEGOs, but whatever:

I really like how each kid chose to represent her word using a completely different method. Syd's uses a vertical two-animal pair to represent each letter--

--while Will's relies on a very precise arrangement of stacked papers:

And yet they were both able to read the other's words without struggle! Yay for good communication!

Before sending the kids to work on their user groups doc some more, I helped them make the connection that they can approach a problem the same way they approached a message to be decoded--by working backwards and illuminating the underlying algorithm. If only every problem had its handy-dandy decoding sheet all written out for us!

Another day's lesson was also a real-life programming activity: binary!!! I got out the white board to teach the kids how to read and count in binary, discussing, as well, some other number systems that use different bases. The Sumerians, for instance, used a sexagesimal system!

To make sure they grasped the concept, I gave the kids this set of binary puzzles to work. One of them needed a couple of tries, but in the end they both mastered Base 2! That meant that I could tell them that these ones and zeros are also called bits, and you can use a bitmap to visually represent the information encoded in binary... or you can use it to make a picture! We Google Imaged some examples of bitmaps, then the kids used the Pixelation widget on Code.org to make their own. They enjoyed the open-ended free play of creating black and white and color pixel images, while practicing their binary and learning hexadecimal. 

Our special activity for this Journey was building a computer from a kit:

The Kano kit is a super fun walk-through of assembling the parts of a computer, then setting it up. It's got Raspberry Pi to support more sophisticated programming activities, or a variety of add-ons that you could purchase to give a younger kid different coding experiences. 

After building the computer, we used another computer analogy to think about user-centered needs. If every need/problem is an output, then the reasons why a problem is happening or a need is occurring are the inputs. You can decode the problem the way that we decoded the animal alphabets, trying to figure out the inputs. When you think you understand the input, you can work towards a solution that changes that input and produces a better output.

The kids did some more programming in later days--Will made me a table tennis game, for one!--and played with our Turing Tumble, but once kids understand the concept of computational thinking, they're actually ready to use computational thinking to solve a community problem.

The kids' TAP dealt with the deficit of good educational materials to teach the Robotics badges, especially to younger levels. When we were learning the parts of a robot, the kids made their own graphics, diagrams, and definition cards, but it's probable that most troops wouldn't have that kind of time. But those visual, tactile learners still need to learn the material!

To solve the problem, the kids created this set of educational materials that can be presented online or printed. 

Click here for the complete Robot Slide Deck.

If printed, they can be copied at different sizes and the definitions can be used to label the robot graphic. It's a pretty nifty plan, and you can tell that a couple of homeschooled kids who've had a heavily Montessori-inspired education created it!

Kid-Made: How to Make 3D Glasses

Got some scratched sunglasses, or an old pair of prescription glasses with a cracked lens? Pass them over to your kids, because this is a project just for them! Here's how to make 3D glasses from an old pair of frames.

How to Make 3D Glasses

These DIY 3D glasses are an excellent kid-build, and really fun for kids to play with afterwards. Here's what your kid should do to make them: 

1. Remove the lenses from the frame. You may have to help your kid bust the plastic lenses out of plastic sunglasses (or just give her a hammer!), but all old prescription frames should require are a teeny-tiny screwdriver and the assertion of your kid's fine motor skills: Screw the little screws back into the frame after the lenses are removed. Save those lenses for telescope-making! 

2. Trace each lens onto colored cellophane. Colored cellophane is the real trick pony here! Have your kiddo trace around the outside of the lens, so that it will fit over the frame, not inside it: The traditional order is red for the left lens and blue for the right, but there's nothing to prevent an interested kid from experimenting--how would a yellow/blue combo work? A purple/green? 

3. Glue the cellophane to the front of the frames. Hot glue can be a little messy (as you can tell from the pic of the finished glasses!), but it holds well and dries quickly, perfect for my kid who likes to see results right away! 

4. Play with drawing. Let the kid choose marker colors that closely match the cellophane, then experiment with drawing images that will be perceived as three-dimensional. My kiddo first tried taping two markers together, but now prefers to simply hold the two together. You can also play with drawing the red and blue lines not as parallels, but as different elements of a single drawing--this works especially well if you draw a 3D cube, for instance, making some lines blue and some lines red. Your kiddo can also experiment by trying different papers--plain typing paper, graph paper, or graph paper with red or blue lines. 

5. Troubleshoot. After making a set of glasses using a single layer of colored cellophane for each lens, my kiddo spent some time goofing around with the extra cellophane pieces and discovered that doubling or tripling each piece, to make the color darker, improved the 3D effect, so she glued a couple more layers of cellophane to each lens, and now her 3D glasses REALLY pop.  Another variable that might make a difference is marker color. Play around with brands of markers or shades of color to see what works the best. 

Because there are so many interesting variables to explore, this is a terrific STEM-enrichment activity for an interested kid, and could also make a stellar Science Fair project. Just have your kid write up her hypothesis and procedure for how to make 3D glassses, paste up a diagram of an eyeball, draw a couple of pictures to look at through the glasses, and BOOM! Blue ribbon.