Light and Shadow

Light and Shadow

Young children are highly intrigued by the interplay of light and shadow and the ways light can be manipulated to achieve different kinds of effects. Young children can understand and use terms such as light, shadow, reflection, filter, rainbow, image, transparent, translucent, and magnify.

Concepts that can be acquired by young children include the ideas that:

• Light comes from the sun and stars
• Light appears invisible but contains colors
• Blocking light creates shadows
• Some materials allow light to pass through (transparency)
• Light bounces off of shiny objects (reflection)
• Light passes through objects (refraction), changing the way they look by magnification and reduction

The topic of light and shadow lends itself well to both indoor and outdoor activities. To explore transparency, children can sort objects that allow or block light, make sunglasses or put different colors of cellophane over a flashlight to filter light. Children can watch as you make a kaleidoscope using household materials and online directions (requires use of cutting tool not appropriate for young children).

Viewing objects in water or using different types of glass containers and magnifying glasses or other curved glass objects such as marbles reveals the effects of refracted light. To explore how shadows are made and change, children can make a shadow-puppet theater or pantomime stage or they can measure or draw shadows outside. They can also make shadow prints by placing objects on photo-sensitive or construction paper and exposing it to light.

Observing prisms in different locations and at different times of day, using a water hose in the sunshine to make rainbows, or adding oil to a water puddle outdoors in the sunshine allow children to see the light spectrum as a rainbow. They are naturally intrigued by images in mirrors, and setting up several mirrors so that images are reflected in multiple ways provides a fascinating challenge for them.

Color

Color is all around us, providing a context for informal learning and intentional activities to help children learn concepts such as that

• There are many different colors.
• A single color can have different shades/tints.
• Colors have names.
• Color is not an object but a means to describe objects.
• Colors can be combined.
• Sometimes colors can change.
• Objects can be classified by color.
• An object of one color can be changed to another color.

As with the difference between rote counting and number sense in mathematics, children may be able to recite the names of colors without being able to identify the corresponding color correctly; likewise, they may match and sort colors before being able to name them. Also, just as there are variations in the ways numerals are represented or written in different fonts, color tints or shades such as lemon, light, or gold may be difficult for a child to all categorize as being in the yellow family. Therefore as children play informally with colored objects and engage in activities such as drawing with crayons or markers or using paints, teachers can help them learn the names of colors and distinguish between them. Children should learn words such as shade, tint, dark, light, primary colors, and secondary colors.

Many materials are useful for explorations with color, including food coloring, water, different colors and kinds of paints, eggs, crayons, markers, colored pencils, colored cellophane, containers; eyedroppers, ice cube trays, paint-chip sample cards, and color sticker dots.

Activities that promote learning about colors include these:

• Sorting and/or matching paint-chip cards (from hardware or paint store) within color groups
• Having a color scavenger hunt
• Making a set of colored water bottles that represent the three primary (red, blue, yellow) and three secondary (orange, green, purple) colors
• Using paints, crayons, or markers to combine colors and mix them together
• Mixing multicultural paints to match exact skin tones among children
• Dyeing eggs

Magnetism

Children are naturally attracted to the unique qualities of magnets and the invisible power they represent for attracting and repelling some objects but not others. Terminology appropriate for young children includes words such as force, magnet, repel, attract, pole, and metal (iron). Materials to include in the classroom for exploring magnets can be made available in interest centers for informal exploration as well as intentional activities with an experimental approach to distinguish magnetic from nonmagnetic objects, note strength of magnetic force, etc.

As children use magnets and metal and nonmetal objects of different kinds, concepts such as the following are supported:

• Magnets exert force and cause objects to move
• Only metal is magnetic
• Only certain kinds of metal are magnetic
• Magnets both attract and repel
• The earth has magnetic force

Discovery activities focus on providing assorted objects and different kinds of magnets; children can subsequently classify, graph, or label magnetic/nonmagnetic materials. Informal play with magnets can be set up, for example, by attaching magnets to the fronts of small metal cars and pulling them along a premade or improvised racetrack or attaching paper clips to cutout paper fish and fishing with a magnet attached to the end of a string or line. Children could also use a magnet wand to move floating corks with an inserted straight pin in the water table. Although a bit on the abstract side as far as making symbolic geographic connections, young children can easily learn how to tell where “north” is with a compass and understand that magnetism is what makes the compass work.