| Common Materials Suitable for Light Table Play | ||
|---|---|---|
| Materials | Applications | |
| X-ray films; colored or black/white slides; microfiche film; shells; small clear plastic boxes for holding specimens children might collect, such as butterfly wings or leaves | Close observation with magnifying glasses to examine images and/or embedded details that are enhanced when lighted from below | |
| Salt, flour, gelatin crystals, colored sugar or rice | Using hands and fingers for tactile exploration and making impressions/designs, tracings, or drawings in the material | |
| Colored cellophane, tissue, glow-in-the-dark festival bracelets | Layering and observing color transparency, creating shapes and images | |
| Clear plastic tubing cut to different lengths; fill with clear or colored liquids, oils, gels, or glitter, and seal with hot glue | Observing movement of liquids, layering and observing how light reveals changes in colors and density | |
| Tightly sealed clear heavy-duty zip-locking-style bags filled with colored hair gel, baby food, shaving cream, or “water beads” (expandable beads used in floral arrangements) | Tactile exploration by pressing, squishing, and moving material inside the bags. Observing changes in density and transparency | |
| Colored pasta, plastic buttons, beads, jewelry, and clear plastic ice cube trays, bowls, or small trays | Sorting/matching: moving, arranging, or stacking in different ways to create patterns and shapes | |
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Children can play with and explore light in other ways. Taping a white sheet of paper, poster board, or mural paper to a wall in front of a traditional overhead projector allows children to pantomime, create shadows, and make and use stick puppets. They can also enlarge drawings, text, or photographs. Flashlights or strings of holiday lights can be used inside a cardboard box to make a small shadow theater. Children can use colored cellophane and cardboard and tubes to make “sunglasses,” binoculars, kaleidoscopes, or colored viewing filters that alter their visual perception of everyday scenes and objects. Children love to trace their shadows on a sidewalk, observe how a prism hung in a window or oil in a puddle creates the colors of the rainbow, and track the movement of the shadow on a sundial over the course of aday.
Like sensory play, play and activities with light and shadow support the ATL standards since they can engage children for extended periods of time in open-ended play, provoking curiosity and exploration through introduction to unfamiliar materials and the exploration of familiar materials in unfamiliar ways.
Blocks and Construction
Childrens use of blocks for construction play has been heavily researched and the benefits of such play, particularly as related to later mathematical achievement, are well documented (Shaklee, OHara, & Demarest, 2008; Trawick-Smith et al., 2016). As in many other kinds of play, children playing with blocks refine physical coordination, use language to represent thinking, and develop self-esteem, the ability to cooperate, and responsibility through social interactions (Hewitt, 2001). Block play follows a developmental sequence over time as children between birth and age 5 acquire and internalize concepts about space, balance, weight, symmetry, shape, size, number, and operations (Shaklee, OHara, & Demarest, 2008). While the developmental stages of block building have been described in many different configurations (Guanella, 1934; Reifel & Greenfield, 1982), Figure 7.2 illustrates block building in six stages as described by Sharon MacDonald in 2001.