Chemistry Boggle
Do you ever just stumble upon great ideas and want to replicate them for your classroom? Chemistry Boggle was one of those ideas. I found an article about Chemistry Boggle, and it included files for creating a 3D printed Chemistry Boggle set. You can find those files on TPT by another author. But the problem was that I don’t have a 3D printer. I toyed around with getting one, but it just didn’t make sense for me. I tried to find sources online that could 3D print it for me…but the quotes were pretty expensive.
I didn’t want to give up on the idea of Chemistry Boggle. Being the crafty teacher that I am, I pondered how I could make my own for a price that wasn’t astronomically expensive. Don’t get me wrong…it hasn’t been my cheapest endeavor. Nevertheless, I set out to make DIY Chemistry Boggle games that I could use in my high school chemistry classroom.
In this blog post, I’ll talk a little about the materials I used to create my own DIY Chemistry Boggle games, as well as how to students will use the games when practicing formulas and names for binary compounds.
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Materials and Supplies
Since I ruled out 3D printing, I needed to find a tray that the dice could sit in. I pondered this for a while. I considered jewelry storage boxes that jewelry makers use, along with some other ideas. But in the end, I kept coming back to the actual Boggle game. A game set from Amazon was less than $10, and it included the tray and a timer. I wouldn’t need the alphabet dice, but I knew I could find blank dice and make my own chemistry ion dice. So I bought actual Boggle games and took out all the alphabet dice, which I donated to a colleague at school. That left me with the tray and a timer for the sets I planned to make.
I also needed blank dice that I could turn into chemistry dice. I originally purchased different sized dice, but found that some of the dice (d10, d20) had too small of a surface. So I stuck with regular d6 (16 mm) dice, which fit ncely into the slots of the tray.
That just left materials for creating my ion dice. The cheapest and easiest option would be to write the ions on the dice using Sharpies. But over the years, I have used Sharpie on other dice that I’ve used when writing formulas, and it doesn’t last forever. And because this was a game I want to last, I decided to be a little extra and use my Cricut to complete the dice. Here are some options of materials that I used to make my ion dice for Chemistry Boggle:
Black Vinyl. I used Oracal 651 vinyl, but any vinyl could work, and it doesn’t have to be black.
Transfer Tape for applying the vinyl to the dice.
Sticker paper for Print Then Cut, plus this Oracal 651 Transparent Vinyl to protect the sticker paper for longevity purposes.
Making the Dice.
To be honest, this was quite time consuming. It took me a LONG time to finish all the dice. I decided to buy 12, so I could have my students do this as partners, but you could totally get away with a set per table. Each Boggle has room for 16 dice. So 16x12=192 dice total…
As a reminder, you could totally just use a Sharpie and write on the dice. But I’m a little extra sometimes.
The dice I used were 16 mm dice. They fit in the Boggle tray nicely. But that doesn’t give you a lot of room. So I decided to forgo charges. I figured my students should be able to use their periodic table (with includes charges of ions) to quickly look and see what charge it would have. Due to the size of the dice, I didn’t really want to mess with really small + and - signs as cut by my Cricut. Small designs can really be a pain. Some of these were tricky enough as it was, so I’m glad I left off the charges. These are the dice I made using vinyl:
Alkali Metals (+ H): H, Li, Na, K, Rb, Cs
Alkaline Earth Metals: Be, Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba, Ra
Halogens and friends: F, Cl, Br, I, O, S
Other Nonmetals: O, S, Se, N, P, F
Other metals: Al, Sc, Zn, Ag, W, Mo
After cutting these out, weeding, and applying them to my dice, I found myself occasionally frustrated. The size meant I had trouble weeding, especially with the a, e, l, and i letters. I worried that trying to include charges (metals with more than one oxidation state) and polyatomics on other dice would be really time consuming and frustrating. So I decided to use Print then Cut on some of the dice. I used Print then Cut on sticker paper, which I then affixed to the dice. After that, I cut out clear vinyl that I could put on top of the sticker paper to protect the life span of the sticker paper. These are the dice I made using sticker paper and Print then Cut:
Mn⁴⁺, Mn⁷⁺, Cr⁶⁺, Fe²⁺, Fe³⁺, Co²⁺
V⁵⁺, Ti²⁺, NH₄⁺,Ti⁴⁺, Cr²⁺, V³⁺
Pd⁴⁺, Ni³⁺, Ni²⁺, Co³⁺, Cu⁺, Cu²⁺
ClO₄⁻, ClO₃⁻, ClO₂⁻, SO₄²⁻, SO₃²⁻, CrO₄²⁻
NO₃⁻, CN⁻, OH⁻, NO₂⁻, CO₃²⁻, MnO₄⁻
Cr₂O₇²⁻, PO₃³⁻, PO₄³⁻, C₂O₄²⁻, NO₃⁻, OH⁻
Now if you count up what I have listed so far, you get a total of 11 dice. The Boggle game holds 16 total. You could totally make additional dice. But I was getting tired and wanting to get it finished, so I just duplicated some of the ones I had already made. I opted for half cation and half anion dice.
Playing Chemistry Boggle.
Put your students in teams or pairs. I made 12 sets, so that I could do it in pairs. But you could totally just make enough for table teams.
Students will shake the container to mix up the dice.
The students should place the container down on the table and open the lid.
The timer should be flipped immediately to start the round. As soon as the timer begins, they will look for combinations of dice that would form a binary compound. You can have them write the formula, the name, or both.
The dice must be touching in order to use it for a formula, name, etc.
It must contain a combination of a cation and anion.
Once the timer is up, have the students pass their work to a partner/neighbor to verify their formulas and/or names. Whoever has the most written down (correctly) in the time frame will be the winner for that round. Students can count how many they got correct and add it to their score.
You can lengthen the time by having students flip the timer back over once more during a particular round. That would double the time for a round.
You can play once or multiple rounds. If you have your students play more than once, the winner will be the one student with the highest tally after all of the rounds.
That’s it! It is a little time consuming to set it up initially, but is a game that can be used year after year. And who knows, maybe it could be used for other content too…I'm thinking maybe chemical reactions. The students shake the container, form compounds, and then write single or double-replacement reactions? Who knows?! I hope you enjoyed this post. Thanks for reading. If you try out Chemistry Boggle in your classes, let me know on Instagram. I would love to see how you use it and how it goes for your students. If you have any questions, feel free to message me on Instagram or send me an email at rebecca.unbrokenbond@gmail.com. Happy teaching!
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