Down the rabbit hole


I love watching my children fall down a rabbit hole of learning. Recently, my son has been teaching himself the periodic table because he came across it as he followed his interests and was motivated to find out more. It's only after a little time has passed that I can join the dots and see how one thing lead to another.

A couple of months ago we went to a local Gem Show. While there my nine-year-old son, Cohen, decided to start a collection of the gemstones that are mentioned in Minecraft. He had fascinating conversations with a gem cutter about the rocks and minerals. Once home, we looked them up in books and discussed the hardness of each stone. We took to rubbing rocks together while in nature, to see which was harder. This lead to an introduction to Moh's scale of hardness. From there we touched on the Periodic table. A little while later he was watching a Youtube clip about Minecraft Education, in which they discussed the new chemistry update. Cohen watched, paused, rewound and watched again, taking notes on the recipes they mentioned using elements from the Periodic table. He wrote the elements in their shorthand,  eg. iron down as Fe, as he said it was quicker that way. He showed his notes to his sister, who couldn't follow it all, so he decided he would make a good copy and share his discoveries with his Minecraft friends.

Children's curiosity never fails to amaze me. xx

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