A few weeks ago, I tried to literally bore my 3yo to sleep by telling him everything I knew about nuclear and particle physics. It's a fair bit, it was my speciality once. Every night since then, as he's falling asleep, his little voice pipes up: "tell me about atoms daddy."

So now I have to deliver a quiet lecture on the Standard Model every night. He loves lists of things, like all the streets home from daycare, or the train stations between here and Central, so he loves hearing the list of leptons and quarks and bosons.

Anyway, I made this poster for him, based on the CPEP ones we used to have at uni ( http://www.cpepweb.org/cpep_sm_large.html). DM me if you want the PDF, it looks great as an A2 and I've done the CMYK conversion for printing. OfficeWorks does it for $4 ($12 laminated).

Alas I ran out of room for antimatter, colour charge and confinement, but hey, maybe there can be a second poster later.

It's funny though — on the surface of it, it seems like it must be far too advanced for a 3yo. But when you think about it, quarks and leptons are no more or less real to him than, say, dinosaurs or planets, and he loves those too. And he recognises the letters on the particles.

(Oh, my DMs aren't open, so just @ me.)

I am absolutely overwhelmed by the kind and sweet things people are saying about this, thanks everyone

Addendum: he has really grasped onto the "everything is made of atoms" part of this, so tonight he listed just about every object he could think of and asked if it was made of atoms.

"And my bed?"
Yes, and your bed.
"And that wall?"
Yep.
"And the armchair?"
Yes, the armchair too.
...
...
"And... the book case?"
Y—

"And my home?"
Yep, the whole apartment block.
"And your home? Oh wait, your home is my home."
Haha, it is.
...
...
"But is it made of atoms?"
Yep.
"And... [best friend]'s home?"
Yes, it is. And [other friend]'s home, and [third friend]'s home.

"Is [yet another friend]'s home?"

Update from the other night:

"Is my... is... [extremely long pause] is my atoms poster made up of atoms?"
—Yes! Yes it is.

I have never heard such a contemplative silence. I think the next poster will have to be on the philosophy of referential language.

Update from this morning: after listing everything in sight (mummy? daddy? fridge? milk? cereal? table? etc.) he asks "is [baby sister] made up of atoms?"

yep!

*runs over to her on the floor*
*puts face up real close to hers*
"HI! YOU'RE MADE UP OF LOTS OF ATOMS! DID YOU KNOW?"

(Also on his list from this morning was "my atoms poster", so I think he's really wrapping his head around that one.)