As soon as I arrived the children and Mrs Carolan were eager to show me the very very long drawing traced last week of Caitlin’s shadow… out in the playground and to show the scale of Cailtin next to it! The drawing was the whole length of the white roll!

This was a great way to re-cap on the activities that we had shared so far….

We had very cold weather an no sun, so we planned to work in the school hall to experiment further with shadow and light. Our equipoment was:

Overhead projector

large Rolls of paper on floor and walls

markers

torches

lots of enthusiasm!

We soon got to work…..

 

The children had to work in small teams to work together – holding the light steady and keeping still if you were the one holding a shape to be drawn around… very tricky!

 

A group of children found that it lying down and having your outline edge traced was good fun!

 

Some children used their upright shapes to draw around when they could catch a shadow…….

 

Using the torch light was very tricky as the children found out. However one group worked with the light from an overhead projector and this worked really well. Some wonderful shadows could be traced and photographed…….

 

 

 

What great work! The children took a break and after they returned we decided to create some shadows using objects and small toys….

A story started to take shape…..

In came a mummy, a bicycle, a table, a swing, a slide, a spider, a cow a dinosaur…….

I wonder if you know what happens!

       

  

  

A dinosaur came……..        

  I think he was hungry….

   he gobbled up alot of things.

  Cian took his time to decide what the dinosaur would do!

 

 

This was a WHOLE day visit so we had plenty of time to experiment and use our imaginations.

The children returned to the classroom and amazingly recalled the story.. I had photographed it, but the children had REMEMBERED all the sequence and characters and made drawn silhouettes of them on paper. They even remembered the word SILHOUETTE ! I was very impressed.

 

   

  

 

  

  

  

 

 

 

BUT THAT WASN’T THE END!

We managed to find another way to trace shapes and letters.

This time we used a light-box and black paper sheets.

I suggested the children try drawing round simple shapes using a pencil on black paper.

 

Mrs Carolan showed the children how, if they held their sheets up to the light, they could make out a lovely shape made up of small dots of light.

Here’s a selection of shapes and letters, after each child made a punched out shape of the first letter of their name.