Recently the girls have enjoyed talking about light. They are really into shadows at the moment and I thought this was a great time to start learning about light and how it travels.

We started off by discussing light sources and reflectors. What they are and what are the differences? We took a walk around our house and pointed out different objects deciding whether it is a light sources or a reflector. Kairi told me that the Moon is a reflector but the Sun is a light source. I grabbed a printable from Twinkl and we separated the light sources from the reflectors, the girls practicing their cutting skills at the same time.

Next the girls wanted a really hands on activity, a few months ago I had seen this Duplo projector on Facebook, so I grabbed our box out and gave it a try. It was so simple to build that the girls could help with the preparation. To finish setting it up, we also needed some shadow puppets, but my drawing skills are not the best so luckily Twinkl had us covered! Dogs, Princesses and Dinosaurs they have so much to choose from, I quickly printed out a couple, cut them and stuck lollipop sticks to the backs.

Lastly, I grabbed my phone and used the light as the touch. The girls got straight to work with their puppets and to my surprise Kairi loved telling the story and had great fun making a start, middle and end. They both practiced turn taking and made lots of different voices and noises for their characters.

As one of us played out the story, the others would sit opposite and be the audience, we discussed why thee light was making shadows and as the activity moved on we learnt all about transparent, translucent and opaque items.

The girls finished off by making shadows with their hands and heads on the wall, later at bed time the made a few more shadows before they went to sleep and brought up some keywords from the day.

Keywords: Transparent, Translucent, Opaque, Travels, Through, Shadow, Light source, Reflector

Areas of developments: Cutting Skills, Knowledge and Understanding of the world, Science - light and shadow, Literacy - Story Telling, Fine and Gross motor skills when cutting and building.

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