Getting to use the lab!
http://books.google.com/books/about/Crystal_Growth_in_Gels.html?id=pQ-JuNXEL6wC 
  The classic text.  Set them up, come back in a few weeks.  (Potentially any gel - polyacrylamide, agarose, agar, gelatin...)  Meanwhile,

The Prussian Blue prep works across the transition metals, with different colors.  Alas, it is not crystalline (but maybe in gel...).  Vanadium oxidation states are a spectrum of colors.  Vanadyl, V=O, is especially fine (but not as a food supplement).

Cobalt can be preparatively more fun than iron.  Co(II) is substitution labile - put anything on it you want, in real time.  Co(III) is substitution inert.  Anything you put on Co(II) then oxidize to Co(III) stays forever (absent a trace of reducing agent to reopen the door).   There is vast and colorful Co coordination chemistry.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/bookseries/10.1002/SERIES2146 
  Everything in there works to spec.  Fine some interesting things to do (and scale down to grams).

Cobalt sepulcrate and especially sarcophogate (Alan Sargeson)!   Tris(ethylenediamine)cobalt(III) is a propeller, left- or right handed. It can be resolved afterward (Inorg. Syn. 6 186 (1960)) or made entirely as one hand.  Net charge is 3+.  Tris(oxalato)cobaltate(III) is a propeller, left- or right handed. It can be resolved afterward (Inorg. Syn. 8 204 (1966)) or made entirely as one hand.  Net charge is 3-.  Tris(ethylenediamine)cobalt(III) tris(oxalato)cobaltate(III) as a salt with same or opposite hands could be interesting.  The crystal will certainly be tightly bound.