Forget about other board games. This is the most in your element you will ever get.

Mother and homeschool teacher Karyn Tripp (who we may now refer to as local hero) was looking for a new way to teach her kids the periodic table when a neon bulb flashed above her head. After printing the periodic table on four sheets of paper, she alphabetically labeled the rows, laminated the tables, and glued them to two filing folders. When opened and pressed back to back, the folders transform into a makeshift version of Battleship. Best of all, Tripp’s kids, the oldest of whom is 11 years old, are now in love with chemistry.

“The kids can then mark where they want to place their ships by circling rows of 2, 3, 4 and 5 elements on the lower table,” Tripp writes on her website. “They play by calling out coordinates. If they miss they put an X on the spot they chose on the upper table. If they get a hit, they circle it.”

With each sunken ship, players have to call our the specific elements that were demolished. As an educational tool, it works surprisingly well, if only to increase familiarity with an otherwise infrequently observed chart. “He has a poster of the elements on the wall in his bedroom,” Tripp said to The Huffington Post when talking about her oldest son. “He says his favorite element is Einsteinium because he thinks the name is cool.”

Image Credit: Karyn Tripp

Instead of begging your mom to build you one, create the game yourself, convince her to play, and prove you’re not a boron. Who says all the love and gratitude between kids and parents argon nowadays? Not us.

Bonus points if you come up with puns during gameplay (of course).

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HT: The Huffington Post

Image Credit: Karyn Tripp