Teaching laboratory of qualitative analytical chemistry is still a controversial issue in chemistry courses. However, important researchers and educators in chemistry recognized and highlighted the importance that the contents of this discipline represent in the formation of chemists, once it can provide handling and understanding of microscopic phenomena based on the observation of their macroscopic effects, once such reactions and phenomena are the basis of important instrumental methods of analysis. Thus, a proposal based on a bottom-up approach has been developed, starting with the observation of different reactions of cations in laboratory, followed by a search for the reaction responsible for each resulting phenomenon observed during the experimental step. Then these reactions are related with the separation procedures of each group of cations. Eventually the separation of these groups can also be performed depending on the time available. The proposal has been applied in teaching laboratory of qualitative analytical chemistry at Instituto de Química de São Carlos/USP since 2015, where the discipline is offered duirng 4 hours/week, and a positive feedback regarding the evolution of the methodology and its acceptance by students. Good results were also obtained concerning the appropriation of the contents by the students, using the proposal.