Where every element is a character, every family a story.
A story-driven science collection that turns the periodic table into a cast of loud, quiet, sparkly, shy, and wildly reactive friends. Children meet the elements the way chemists wish they had ~ as personalities, not points on a grid.
Every book in this collection is already written. They are now moving through the longest part of any picture book’s journey: illustration, design, formatting, and production. Joining the waitlist guarantees you the launch announcement, the bundle preorder option, and the free starter resource the day each book is ready.
This collection helps children understand the elements as living characters with jobs, personalities, and places in the world. The periodic table stops being a poster on a wall and starts being a neighborhood children can walk through.
As children meet each element inside a story, they begin to see the invisible scaffolding of their own lives ~ the air they breathe, the water they drink, the metal in their bike, the salt on their dinner ~ and science becomes a way of noticing.
Children form 5 working hypotheses an hour during free play. They are scientists already. We just give them the lab in story form.
Most children meet the periodic table as a wall of symbols that chemistry class warns them they’ll eventually have to memorize. The Periodic Playground was built for a wildly different beginning ~ one where every element is a character, every family has a personality, and learning chemistry feels more like meeting a cast than memorizing a chart.
Children begin to see chemistry as a story about relationships ~ which elements like to react, which ones stay calm, and why atoms behave the way they do.
Parents and caregivers gain an on-ramp to early STEM that doesn’t require a chemistry degree ~ and that turns every kitchen, every garden, and every thunderstorm into a science moment.
Classrooms discover chemistry taught through narrative ~ where understanding precedes memorization and curiosity lasts longer than a test.
Children who eat together with family at least 5 nights a week have stronger vocabularies, better grades, and lower rates of depression in adolescence. Mealtime is brain time.
By age 5, scientific identity is already forming. A child either thinks “I am the kind of person who notices things and asks why” or quietly decides they are not. That single belief, formed in early childhood, shapes career trajectories, problem-solving habits, and lifelong curiosity.
Children exposed to scientific vocabulary in story by age 3 score higher on 8th grade science assessments than children who receive after-school tutoring later. The earliest exposure is the most durable.
Children are natural scientists already. They form roughly 5 working hypotheses an hour during free play. Stories that honor that instinct, instead of teaching around it, raise children who keep noticing, keep asking, keep discovering. For life.
In 1983, researcher David Wade Chambers gave 4,807 children, every reader, a single instruction: “Draw a scientist.” Fewer than 1% drew a woman. The study has been replicated dozens of times since. The most recent meta-analysis (Miller et al, 2018) tracked 50 years and 78 studies. The trend is hopeful, but the gap remains.
Children draw what they have seen. Every science textbook with no women, every TV show with one balding scientist, every classroom poster of the same six men ~ stacks up. By age 16, the stereotype has done its work. The kids who could have been scientists have stopped seeing themselves on the page.
“Children draw what they have been shown. Show them more, and they draw more.”
Miller et al. · Child Development · 2018
Children who personify scientific concepts ~ elements as friends, atoms as characters, reactions as conversations ~ retain 4x the content into adulthood. Story rewires science.
Identity calcifies early. The good news in this 50-year dataset is that EVERY decade has seen the percentage of women and people of color rise. Books, shows, and adult voices are doing the work. We can do more.
You are the casting director of which scientists your child sees.
You are the gatekeeper of which faces appear on the classroom wall.
You exist. Let kids see you. That alone moves the needle.
You shape which biographies a child reads in their first decade. That curation matters.
Every Periodic Playground story is, deliberately, an answer to the Draw-A-Scientist gap. Different ages. Different bodies. Different cultures. Different curiosities.
A child who reads these books from age 3 grows up with a mental Rolodex of scientists who look like everyone they know. That is how the picture in their head changes. Not through one-off lessons. Through stories absorbed before stereotypes can calcify.
The scientist in your child’s mental picture is the scientist you put there.
Children exposed to rhyme and song in early childhood show stronger phonological awareness, the single biggest predictor of reading success.
Each book brings one element to life as a character with a name, a job, and a favorite way of showing up in the world. Within each of the ten family series, children meet the elements together ~ as neighbors, teammates, and characters who share a personality. Three of the main families also have Synthetics sub-mini-series for the lab-born members of the group.
Over time, the periodic table stops feeling like a grid of facts and starts feeling like a group of friends children would recognize in a crowd.
By age 5, scientific identity is forming. A child either decides “I am a scientist” or does not. The right story decides.
The Science Behind the Stories
Each element becomes a character with a name, a face, and a job. Oxy. Ferro. Carbo. These aren’t symbols on a chart ~ they are entry points into real scientific literacy.
Stories show the element doing its real job in the world ~ filling a lung, lighting a match, rusting a fence, shining a coin. Children see how the tiny builds the everyday, one element at a time.
When the elements show up in real life, children finally have friends for them. They can say “that’s Oxy’s job” or “that’s Ferro doing his thing,” and suddenly science becomes a language they already speak.
Additional materials designed to support and deepen understanding beyond the story.
Every book in the series comes with companion resources designed to deepen understanding and spark conversation.
Hands-on activities that reinforce learning through drawing, writing, and creative play.— one per book.
Thoughtful prompts that help children connect each story to their own experiences and emotions.
Conversation starters and context for adults to guide children through each story's themes.
Character cards, Quotes, & Coloring Sheets that help the lesson land and last. hese are included in the Paid for Activityy Packs.
As children engage with the stories, they start noticing elements in the world around them. The copper pipes, the aluminum can, the oxygen they breathe. Matter becomes meaningful. And somewhere along the way, chemistry becomes a language children realize they already speak.
“When a child points at a loaf of bread and says ‘there’s carbon in here,’ the periodic table has stopped being homework and started being the world. And the world, suddenly, is a more wondrous place to live.”
~ MAISEL McLAULA
This collection was built for the adults who believe chemistry should start with wonder, not warning. The ones who want their children to look at the world and see how it’s made. Each story is grounded in accurate chemistry, shaped by character and story, and told with the joy of someone who has watched a child realize that everything ~ everything ~ is made of friends they just haven’t met yet.
Whether you are the parent who lets a 5-year-old mix vinegar and baking soda for the third time, the teacher who builds science around questions instead of answers, the museum docent answering 100 follow-ups from one curious 7-year-old, or the chemistry mentor who showed a child what they could become ~ thank you. You are growing the next generation of scientists, one experiment-shaped puddle at a time.
Children exposed to scientific vocabulary in story by age 3 outperform peers on 8th-grade science assessments. Decades later. The earliest curiosity is the most durable.
You are not just teaching science. You are giving a child the radical permission to wonder how things work, to test, to be wrong, to try again. That habit becomes a career. Or just becomes a beautiful way of being in the world.
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“Science is a story we get to live inside, one wonder at a time.”
A child’s working vocabulary at age 3 is one of the strongest predictors of academic success at age 18. Every word read aloud is a vote cast for that child’s future.
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