Inside: A fun collection of light activities for exploring light, with accompanying picture book suggestions to use in your investigation.
Today we’re sharing a super cool list of light activities for use in your next learning investigation. From fireflies to the sun and moon, torch play to glow sticks, we’ve got activity suggestions for exploring all different sources of light. They are perfect for teachers, educators and parents who would like to incorporate this fun, learning theme into their centres, classrooms and homes.
25+ Light Activities for Learning
Fireflies
1. Book Inspired Brainstorm: Eric Carle’s The Very Lonely Firefly is actually a great starting point for this theme as the firefly finds different sources of light while looking for it’s friends. Before reading the book start out by brainstorming a list of as many different sources of light that the children can think of?
2. Firefly Drawing: My class of 5 year olds recently made fantastic firefly pictures by cutting a small piece of shiny paper for the body of the firefly and drawing on the rest of its body and decorating the night sky black background. I was surprised at how effective regular coloured pencils looked on black paper.
Day & Night: Light Activities Exploring the Sun, Moon & Stars
Continue your exploration of light with those most marvellous lights in our sky – the sun, moon and stars! Here are some fun ways to explore their wonder together…
3. Day and Night Around the World: Introduce day and night around the world with this simple demonstration from Learn Play Imagine. You’ll just need a globe and a torch.
4. Rainbow Filters: Explore colour filters with light from the sun with this simple Kandinsky inspired art project.
5. Catch the Sun: Make Cosmic Sun Catchers with Babble Dabble Do.
6. DIY Kaleidoscopes: Or try making these mini kaleidoscopes with a twist! (Via Babble Dabble Do)
7. Shadow Shapes: Children are fascinated by their shadow and their are lots of cool activities that you can do related to making shadows! Children can work in pairs or small groups to make super cool body shapes and then tracing the shadows with chalk (via Tinkerlab).
8. Shadow Drawing: Or, on a smaller scale, this Lego Shadow Drawing from Handmade Kids Art could be adapted to use all sorts of toys or natural materials to make interesting shadow drawings.
9. Shadow Puppets: Try making your own shadow puppets and these magical, stained glass puppet show backdrops (via Creative Play Central).
10. Colored Shadows: For the ultimate WOW! moment, why not make coloured shadows with this tutorial from Inner Child Fun.
11. Book Link: Looking for a shadow book to explore together? Check out The Shapes of Me and Other Stuff by Dr Seuss.
12. Pizza Box Oven: If it is warm and sunny where you are, test the warmth of the sun with a pizza box oven (this one via I Can Teach My Child).
13. Sun Melting Experiment: You can also test what melts in the sun (via Frugal Fun 4 Boys).
14. Sun Melted Rainbow Crayons: Or try recycling your broken crayons by making sun melted crayons (via No Time for Flashcards).
15. Star Search: Be inspired to catch a star by reading the awesome How To Catch a Star by Oliver Jeffers and then make your own star shaped Cheese Puffs for morning or afternoon tea.
16. Starry Night Creations: There are so many children’s art ideas inspired by Van Gogh’s Starry Night but these Starry Night Playdough Creations (via Early Years Down Under on Facebook) are my absolute favourite. You can also see their fabulous group collage here.
17. Book link: Support your child’s interest in Van Gogh’s famous painting with the book, Katie and the Starry Night by James Mayhew.
Torches
18. Fun By Torchlight: A fun way to revise reading sight words or spelling words is to make the room dark and hide the words (written on cards) all around the room. Then armed with torches, the children can go searching and exploring, reading the words as they shine the torch on them. Find out more at A Little Learning for Two.
19. Book Link: Read Flashlight by Lizi Boyd and be inspired to make some pencil on black paper pictures of what you might see on a walk in the dark.
Glow Sticks
20. Disco Discovery Bottles: Design your own disco discovery bottles via Babble Dabble Do.
21. Glow Alphabet: Make letters from glow sticks and use them to play a letter recognition game, or to form spelling words (via Creekside Learning).
Lanterns
22. DIY Lanterns: There are lots of ideas for making lanterns – you could try these gorgeous tissue paper covered jars (via Picklebums)
23. Recycled Bottle Lanterns: Or these simple to decorate lanterns from recycled bottles (Go Explore Nature).
24. Fairy Garden: Battery operated tea lights are much safer for projects with children. I love how My Small Potatoes has used them to create this gorgeous Fairy Garden Small World in a basket.
Fairy Lights
25. Just for Fun: Add a little magic to your classroom by decorating it with fairy lights for the week. You could even create a cosy book reading corner from a tent or large cardboard box. Check out this post from Lessons Learnt Journal for inspiration.
26: Book Link: You could also use the brightly lit toyhouse in children’s classic, Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, as inspiration to create your own lighted dollhouses with fairy lights (via The Artful Parent).
Do you have any light activities your children love?
Lauren Hunt is an Early Childhood Teacher who currently works part time teaching children in their first year of school. She is also mum to a two year old daughter. Lauren is passionate about play-based, hands-on learning and is certainly kept busy by her energetic toddler!
