Back in my day the real future chemists were studying math.
Late bloomers huh?
Got my big Gilbert set while in the third grade in the fifties, we didn't know about mathematics, just arithmetic. But our reading skills were just fine. Enough to follow the cook book instructions for starters.
Grew some impressive strings of copper sulfate crystals, made gunpowder , a kind of sparkler, and twisted paper fuses, stink bombs. But exploring the uncharted regions of the Gilbert Chemistry set lead to some vile smelling dark compounds cooked up in the provided test tubes using the little alcohol lamp. The resultant slag defied all cleaning and scraping efforts.
I did discover that a certain combination of chemicals applied as a paste to a stainless steel butter knife and heated red hot over a gas burner resulted in a blue black finish which I found rather pleasing. A good thing, as I was forced to contemplate my discovery at every meal for a month, while having to use the back of a teaspoon to spread butter.
Pity that I didn't write down the mix proportions as decades later I spied the same finish on commercial door hardware.
Good fun for a long time.