Shadows provide extraordinary educational opportunities. Not only do they raise a spontaneous curiosity in the child, stimulating his imagination and exercising his emerging intellectual abilities but they are also omnipresent (even more than sand, stones, water or “pencil and paper”, because you only need a bit of sunlight or even a candle to produce them). Perhaps more effectively than other things, shadows can nourish the child’s need to do and to experiment given the ease with which the variables involved in their formation and transformation can be manipulated.
( Guido Peter – The Hundred Languages of Children)
My youngest has become increasingly fascinated by shadows. As we walk along she shouts
I can see your shadow
or
my shadow is long
With this in mind I thought it would be a nice idea to make shadow shapes and draw around them with pavement chalk. Some shapes worked better than others, my youngest daughter’s shadow looked a little like an embryo!
The girls drew around them. They were particularly interested by the fact that they couldn’t see the whole of their legs. It was a very hot day so only my 4- year- old wanted to colour in the detail. They were very proud of them and pointed them out to their dad every time he walked over the driveway.
drawing around shadows
The finished outline
pavement chalk
the finished drawing
My 4- year -old has very poor eyesight and needs practice copying and tracing shapes to enhance her perceptual motor skills . I hate the idea of sitting her down with worksheets so I thought shadow tracing might be a nice alternative. We took a number of objects outside to draw around. We even attempted to draw around her bike, which was a little tricky.
Later in the week we were playing with blocks in the house.
My 2-year old declared
I have a shadow, it’s behind me
Where is the shadow coming from? What makes it appear?
Maybe the fan.
Okay, so let’s turn the fan off and see if they disappear. Has it gone?
No
My 4-year-old had an idea
I know maybe it’s the light, let’s turn it off. It’s gone!……………oh hang on it’s still there, it’s just fainter.
Shall we see if we have a shadow outside today?
We don’t have a shadow……. Oh wait, when you sit down there is a bit of a shadow.
No shadow
When we sit down there is a bit of a shadow.
Why do you think that happens?
I don’t know. Let’s see if there are any shadows on the grass. No, not even the dog.
Do the trees have shadows?
Yes and the bushes.
investigating shadows near to the ground
My 2-year-old had an idea,
Maybe the sun has taken away our shadows.
No, that’s not right because the sun makes the shadows.
Maybe when the sun is not there it takes them away?
I know, let’s draw a sun and see if they come back.
drawing a sun to bring the shadows back
I know we can stand in the sun and make it bright colours to see if it comes out.
In the meantime my 9-year-old came to join us. I told them the girls had a bit of a problem that they were trying to solve and wondered if she could work it out.
Why is it that when it is cloudy there are no shadows but when things are close to the ground there is a small shadow?
Maybe it’s because it is darker when you are close to the ground
But there is no sun and you need light to make a shadow.
Yes, but if it was dark I couldn’t make a shadow because it couldn’t get darker.
If we were in the sun and it was too bright what would we do?
Stand in the shade.
What makes the shade?
A tree.
So what is happening to make the shade?
I don’t understand.
I drew a picture of the sun in the sky with a stick person stood underneath and a tree with a stick person underneath the tree.
Oh, the tree gets in the way of the sun.
At that moment as the girls were standing in their picture of the sun, the sun came out.
They stood in the sun and hey presto the sun came out. Look, it worked the sun came out!
I think we might work on reflections as a starting point for our pre-school year . We could
Resurrect the shadow puppet theatre
Use the projector to make and investigate shadows
Place paper on the windows and observe and trace shadows
Continue to talk about and ask questions about shadows when we are out and about.
Oh no, it’s raining, that means we can’t do all our fun things like playing on the trampoline and in the sandpit!
There are fun things you can do in the rain too.
Like what?
You can splash in puddles, play with mud or catch raindrops.
Can we make potions in the rain?
Rainy days are perfect for making potions.
I know we could use the rain water because there isn’t any water in the paddling pool.
Yes and you could use mud or mush up wet petals.
Later that day we went for an appointment and when we came out the girls found a fast drip coming from the gutter.
Why is this bit of rain faster?
Where is it coming from?
The roof
Yes, it usually means the gutter is blocked so the water doesn’t go down the drain pipe it falls off the end instead.
I’m trying to catch a raindrop but it keeps bouncing
Why can’t we catch it mummy?
The rain is coming down very fast. What happens when you throw a ball hard?
It bounces high
Yes and the rain is coming down very hard and fast so it bounces off your hand.
I’m trying to catch a raindrop but it keeps bouncing
Shall we go home now and get dry, you could snuggle up in a blanket.
The girls removed their wet shoes. When we arrived home there was a big puddle outside our gate. I asked my 2-year-old if she would like to be carried or splash in the puddle barefooted. She wasn’t sure at first but then declared – splash!
I’m trying to catch a raindrop but it keeps bouncing
After getting dry and snuggling under blankets for a while we decided to venture out for a while. I took the dinosaurs to the sandpit and encouraged the girls to make a swamp.
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When the rain had stopped a disappointed 4-year-old complained
Oh, the rain has stopped we can’t play in the swamp anymore
It’s alright, it will stay wet for a while.
I think I may have succeeded in persuading them that playing in the rain is fun.
Other Rainy Day Ideas
Take umbrellas outside walk under drips or as my 4-year-old suggested – we could play Mary Poppins.
Make patterns with powder paint on the wet ground or on a wet sheet of paper.
Put different containers outside, cover them with different materials eg. plastic bag, tin foil, kitchen roll, fabric, netting. Find out which are waterproof.
Collect rainwater in containers.
Make boats to float in puddles or take out rubber ducks.
Make potions, give the children dry goods like flour, sugar or salt. What happens when they get wet?
Watch the patterns the rain makes in puddles or as it runs down the window. Have a race – which raindrop will get to the bottom first?
Play a dry land race, you are only allowed on dry land and have to avoid all puddles.
Build a shelter with bricks for small world people or animals.
I’ve got an idea Mummy. How about we get the plates we use for barbecues, collect lots of things from around the garden like leaves and sticks and stuff and make people.
Great idea. You could use things from the loose parts station too.
I know, we could use bottle tops for eyes. There are 4 of us so we need 8.
We need 8. We have 10 let’s throw 2 of them away. Now that’s right.
Oh no! We are not allowed to pick leaves from the trees and it isn’t autumn. How will we get leaves?
Look there are some nice little yellow leaves on the floor. Where did they come from?
This tree up here.
That looks like a cherry tree, there are red fruit on it but they are very small.
I’ll pick one and see if there is a stone inside. Yes there is, they are cherries. We could use them for a nose.
My 2 year-old started making a face but soon became more interested in exploring what the glue did. She then brought her watering can and watered her face.
Starting to make a face.
I’m sprinkling grass on mine.
I need more glue.
I’m putting water on mine, it makes it all soggy.
Just as with the clay my 2-year-old has very different interests and plays at a different level to her sisters but that never prohibits her joining in.
On the way home from school we were talking about quills. My Harry Potter obsessed 9-year- old had made a quill by putting a biro refill into a feather.
My four-year old asked
Do we have any ink?
No but we can use paint.
We painted with feathers when I was little didn’t we?
We can do that tomorrow if you like. We could use the Peacock feathers we collected at Remlinger Farm.
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I set the paints up with a few feathers.
painting with the feathery part made some nice patterns
My 2-year-old suddenly declared
I wrote the word ‘buh’
Buh for bat.
She has been playing a Sesame Street alphabet game on the iPad and is beginning to talk about letters and letter sounds.
Her 4-year old sister asked
How do you spell bat?
How do you think you spell it? What does it begin with?
Buh
That’s right and what other sounds are in bat?
Bat…. t
Yes, so what is the middle letter?
Bat…b…a…t….. a. B..a..t spells bat.
After a little bit of impromptu literacy I had a brain wave. The girls are really interested in pirates at the moment and I thought we might be able to do some writing with feathers, make a pirate map or maybe we could make a wizard’s spell.
I stained paper with coffee
When it was dry I singed the edges to make it look like an old scroll.
I asked the girls what they would like to do. They decided on a Wizard’s spell.
It will be funny because we don’t even know how to read and write……………. Maybe Wizards write differently to people.
I think this would be a great way to encourage boys in their mark making.
Set up a desk in a role play pirate ship with ink and quills
Make a spell book for children to add their own spells
Add a few feathers and a small pot of paint to your mark making area
Make treasure maps and encourage the children to mark the treasure with an X.
Literacy for under 5’s shouldn’t be about sitting at a table learning letters, tracing over letters or using flashcards. It can be brought into any aspect of play and when children are ready and interested in letters and sounds they will talk about it, ask questions and experiment. Make it fun, make it relevant and they will learn.
I laughed to myself as I watched my 2-year-old playing in the borders, hiding a stick in the bushes and drawing in the dirt. A few feet away was a very expensive sensory playground with musical instruments, water features and a little bear cave. It was very impressive, but the lure of a stick was just too great. Given the choice I’m sure regardless of the expensive equipment we provide, most children are happy with a stick, a pile of stones, or a tub of water.
My eldest was obsessed with tiny stones when she was small. Everywhere we went she would stop to pick them up or take them home in her pockets. If we were in the garden she would make collections of little stones and spend hours moving them from one place to another. She was very young at the time but I never stopped her for fear that she may swallow them. I simply made sure I was sat nearby so that I could see what she was doing.
filling eggs with stones and glass beads.
My 2-year -old loves sticks. We have 2 rules:
No sticks in the house
Do not point sticks at people’s eyes.
Sometimes they are magic wands, Sometimes fishing rods or sometimes simply something to carry around. Every stick is greeted with equal excitement.
All 3 children play for hours in the sand pit. When I first moved to the US I didn’t think the girls would like the grey, gravelly play sand they have here. I was wrong, they love it as much, if not more than the fine golden sand we had in the UK. Even at the park they chose to play in the dirty gravel rather than on the equipment.
The Theory of Loose Parts
In 1972 the architect Simon Nicholson devised the Theory of Loose Parts. It grew from the notion that all children love to interact with variables. Variables can be anything from materials and shapes to media such as gases and fluids and are used to discover, invent and have fun. The theory of loose parts is as follows
‘In any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it. (Nicholson 1972)
Put simply, the playground with static play equipment will not offer a child the opportunity to discover and create their own scenarios as freely as one that is less predictable or restrictive and offers moveable objects that can interact with the child’s play. A swing is a swing but the gravel can be a home for a bug, fairy dust, a cake, something to draw in, a track for a car and other endless possibilities.
We have the perfect garden for playing with loose parts, with an abundance of trees, pine cones, stones, dirt etc. I decided to organise these a little to see if it would change the way the children played with them.
Storage for Loose Parts
We had an old clothes horse in the garden that was waiting for a purpose. I bought a few hanging baskets and hung them on the clothes horse along with a few other baskets I had found. I also clipped a variety of containers to the clothes horse using an underwear dryer (we also use this for drying paintings).
Using the clothes horse means that it is fully portable making it easy to move out of the rain or to the sandpit, paddling pool or lawn .
The Slide show illustrates some of the things we collected .
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Other ideas for loose parts that can be stored outdoors
sticks, twigs
glass beads, marbles, buttons, bells, beads
feathers
lolly sticks
pegs
acorns, conkers and seeds,
string
large things like pallets, tyres, flowerpots, fabric, boxes, pots and pans, tubes, guttering, bamboo canes, bricks, planks, logs, driftwood.
I love to see the children using their environment to stimulate imaginative and creative play. Here are some of my favourites.
We could build a boat
Carrying a rock to build a boat on the beach (the family were sailing). Moving heavy objects around was a key part of the play.
Come on row faster!
What happens when I bang the stick with a pebble?
The youngest became absorbed in pebbles and sticks, abandoning the project for a while.
Let’s ride on a horse together
Using loose parts with a large piece of clay
I’m putting them on the top
The finished product
1 year old transporting pistachio nut shells
moving from one container to another
Making a bed with magazines
Let’s put the stones in here and make a magic potion
My eldest daughter has been an avid potion maker all her life. We are always finding concoctions in her bathroom and when she was young she would leave them on the windowsill of her bedroom or on the side of the bath and if you knocked them off whilst having a relaxing bath the cold would give you the shock of your life. She is now a huge Harry Potter fan, having read all of the series 4 times and her potions are taking on new meaning. Her younger sister is following in her footsteps. Now that the weather is nicer I set up a little potion station for them in the garden – they love it.
It is a great sensory play activity and science experiment, they got their hands in, testing and smelling the potions and used all kinds of things from the garden. Best of all I love how the imaginary play scenarios evolved. I suggested to my 9-year-old that she might like to make a book of potion recipes.
‘Yes’ she exclaimed excitedly, ‘ But we’ll need about 70 pages, the McClary recipe book’
Today I met with a group of mums and their toddlers to play golf at the pitch and put, Willows Road Golf Course. All of the children were new to golf and most of the children were below the age of 2. My girls had a brilliant time – my 4-year-old even asked if she could come back tomorrow.
Before 11am under 12’s can play the 18 hole pitch and put for $5. The beautiful setting meant that my 2-year-old, who lost interest after a few holes had plenty to keep her occupied.
There were lots of opportunities for learning too:
Number recognition as we moved around the holes
Recognising colours – who has the red ball? What colour flag do we have this time?
Reading signs – Please rake your footprints, keep on the path.
Gross motor skills – how do you hold the club? You need to hit it hard to get it up hill. What is the best way to get it in the hole?
Counting – how many shots did you take that time?
Writing – filling out a score card.
Vocabulary – What is the stick called again? I’m in the bunker.
Turn- taking and awareness of others.
We’ll definitely be doing it again, a great way to spend a sunny morning.
Hmm, how should I play this shot?
I’m getting the hang of this now.
I’m going to take 3 hits this time.
Go on, you can do it.
You need to hit it really hard to get it up the hill.
the sand in the bunker was lots of fun, especially when they raked away their footprints.
When you’ve had enough of golf, climbing and jumping is fun.
The course is built around waterfalls, lakes and bridges – beautiful.
To celebrate the 40th birthday of one of the world’s most famous picture books, I have 10 Hungry Caterpillar inspired activities.
Maths: Build caterpillars from dough or clay. Count the number of segments that make up the caterpillar. Play a matching game – place the correct caterpillar on the leaf with the matching colour or number of segments.
2. Imaginary Play: My eldest followed an enveloping schema for years. She would hoard things in little bags and containers and if you ever left anything around that she could climb into, you would find her inside. On one occasion I left a fabric storage bin in her room. She promptly climbed inside declaring that she was in her cocoon and soon emerged as a beautiful butterfly. Provide material, boxes, play tunnels, blankets, wings and deely boppers.
3. Song and Rhyme: Sing the caterpillar on a leaf song or sit behind your child and pretend to crawl a caterpillar up their back. Teach them to ask ‘Whose that climbing up the garden wall?’ and you reply in a caterpillar like voice ‘It’s me’ said the caterpillar ‘I’m learning how to crawl’.
4.Paint symmetrical butterfly pictures: I’m sure we all remember these from school days. Paint on one side, fold the paper over to create a symmetrical print on the other. This can also work well by painting a piece of string, placing it between the folded paper and then pulling it out whilst the paper is still folded.
5. Movement: Read the Hungry Caterpillar and give the children movements to follow during the story. Egg – curl up in a ball, caterpillar – crawl along the floor moving to eat different types of food, big fat caterpillar – stretch out wide, cocoon – spin slowly then hang their head between their legs, staying very still, butterfly – flap their wings and fly.
6. Discovery – it is a little cold yet but once the weather is warmer, grow your own butterflies. We have done this very successfully using kits from Insectlore. It is fascinating to watch how quickly the tiny caterpillars grow and then instinctively hang upside down. You soon get to recognise when the butterflies are ready to emerge and can feed them indoors for a day or 2 before releasing them into the garden. The species that they use tend to stay within your local area for a few days after being released so you can spot them in the garden.
Find out about the butterflies and caterpillars that can be found in your locality, and print pictures of more exotic species.
7. Food: Make a fruit salad using the fruits eaten by the Hungry Caterpillar or taste some of the more unusual foods he ate. We are a big juicing family so we are going to make Hungry Caterpillar juice using:
1 apple
2 pears
3 plums
4 strawberries
5 oranges
8.Maths: Turn your finger into a crawling caterpillar and measure things in caterpillar steps.
9. Outdoors – Grow a butterfly garden. I saw some amazing butterflies in our garden last year that are fairly commonplace in this area. I’m definitely going to learn about how I can attract them this year.
10. Visit a Butterfly Farm. I can highly recommend the butterfly house at Bristol Zoo and Felinwynt Rainforest Centre in West Wales. In Seattle there is the Butterfly House at the Pacific Science Centre . Feel free to add any recommendations in the comments.
No shadow
When we sit down there is a bit of a shadow.
investigating shadows near to the ground
On the way home from school we were talking about quills. My Harry Potter obsessed 9-year- old had made a quill by putting a biro refill into a feather.
All 3 children play for hours in the sand pit. When I first moved to the US I didn’t think the girls would like the grey, gravelly play sand they have here. I was wrong, they love it as much, if not more than the fine golden sand we had in the UK. Even at the park they chose to play in the dirty gravel rather than on the equipment.
We had an old clothes horse in the garden that was waiting for a purpose. I bought a few hanging baskets and hung them on the clothes horse along with a few other baskets I had found. I also clipped a variety of containers to the clothes horse using an underwear dryer (we also use this for drying paintings).
Today I met with a group of mums and their toddlers to play golf at the pitch and put, Willows Road Golf Course. All of the children were new to golf and most of the children were below the age of 2. My girls had a brilliant time – my 4-year-old even asked if she could come back tomorrow.
How about we try to smooth it out and make it flat and then see what happens?
We can try again in the Summer or in another bit of mud. Can you wash my foot with the hose?
Maths: Build caterpillars from dough or clay. Count the number of segments that make up the caterpillar. Play a matching game – place the correct caterpillar on the leaf with the matching colour or number of segments.
Paint symmetrical butterfly pictures: I’m sure we all remember these from school days. Paint on one side, fold the paper over to create a symmetrical print on the other. This can also work well by painting a piece of string, placing it between the folded paper and then pulling it out whilst the paper is still folded.
Maths: Turn your finger into a crawling caterpillar and measure things in caterpillar steps.
Right from the Start 