Ionic Bonding Manipulative

Use these chunky chemistry manipulatives to help students understand the basics of bringing together ions when moving from compound names to chemical formulas! These pieces help students understand the basics of ratios in a fun tactile way that can be built upon to help students scaffold to a higher level of understanding. 

I use this as a secondary resource with students along with a basic ion table. Students find the elements on the ion table, pick up a matching manipulative piece with the correct ion charge and then use only those pieces to “balance” charges until they reach an overall charge of zero. When the shaped pieces create a larger rectangle, with no sharp edges remaining, the compound is balanced! I find this approach to work better than using pieces with elements labeled on the top as it helps to build a better understanding of the periodic table's group number and it's influence on resulting ion charges. 

This is then expanded on with the “cross-over” method and then we work towards a deeper understanding with more complex applications like polyatomic ions.

These tools have been great to use with students that have struggled with normal approaches to understanding this fundamental concept.

Print Instructions:

15% Gyroid Infill.

Switch colors on the final layers to color the “+” and “-” symbols.

Classroom Print Instructions:

For a full individual set, I will usually print 3 each of the "Cation 3 and Anion 3" models, and 5 each of the remaining models ("Cation 2, Cation 1, Anion 2, Anion 1"). This results in 26 pieces which go into a plastic bag or container to use with students individually or in small groups. I try to keep 5 full sets in my classroom!