Remember when the world used to be magical to our young minds?

There was a time when all of us added one thing to another just to see what would happen. Sometimes it was exciting, other times it was lame. Even the times nothing happened didn’t dampen our spirits and curiosity.

Little Alchemy is like that.

What is Little Alchemy?

Little Alchemy is a deceptively simple game that you can play on the computer or any Android or Apple device. It starts out with four elements: air, earth, fire, and water. You combine these to make various different elements which increase in complexity as you go.

For example, water and fire make steam, steam and air make a cloud. A cloud plus air makes a sky. Combine the sky and earth, and you’ll get a horizon.

There are a total of 550 discoveries that you can make. And, while not of them are scientifically correct, some of them are fun, a horse and a rainbow make a unicorn, and others are simply intuitive. It is this intuitiveness that is what you are after when teaching science.

Ways to Integrate Little Alchemy

Create games and challenges as lesson primers. This is a no-brainer, actually. After all, when you have a game in your hands, a challenge is the next thing that comes up. You can integrate it by putting students in groups, then assigning them a challenge. For example, first group to come up with the recipe for life and documents all the steps gets a prize. Better yet, give them a set of 5 exercises and the first group to get it gets points. It’s less expensive that way on the classroom budget.

Use as quiz reviews. I don’t know any kid that doesn’t like fun ways to review for quizzes, and for several of alchemical pairs they are true to science. If those fit into your lesson, you can use the challenges from above to remind them.

Delve deeper into the whys. Some times this won’t make any sense, but other times it will. Sunlight and rain to make a rainbow? It’s a perfect jump to prisms.

Make them come up with their own. What kid (or adult) doesn’t like to show off their smarts? If you’ve done a few of the exercises above, you can have them make their own alchemical connections as extra points on a quiz or exam, then explain why it would work that way.

Your turn

Games like this have a lot of potential. Have you used it in the class? If so, how? How was the experience? How did the kids take to it?