Winter light box and glitter

salt mixed with some blue glitter - Christmas shapes have been added as well as "jewels" and sparkly pom poms

patterns swirling swirling

pretend snowballs too 

much time was spent creating small piles of salt and then letting it pour through the fingers  as if snowing onto the light box

after a while I changed the pom poms etc for animals, stones and pine cones as the children showed more interest in animal role-play 

 There was a great interest in making tracks - and how the animals made different tracks when they ski-ed across the light box from when the hopped around the light box

the rocks allowed the "mountain" to grow higher - and soon more rocks were collected from the construction room to help increase the height of the mountain.

a polar bear became king of the mountain. The children discussed which animals should play in the "snow" deciding that lions and leopards would not like the coldness...

we have a maximum of three children at the lightbox - others may watch - so that there is space enough to play (we have tried four - but every time it has lead to arguments about how much space, and "that's my patch of salt" etc and I would much rather the children can be in a situation they can manage than one that requires adult intervention everytime). The great thing is that its never the same combination of three - and it is always just one child that leaves to be replaced by another so ideas are shared in a very organic and inspiring way...

In the afternoon we started decorating Christmas trees - the older children could cut out their own trees, the 2 and 3 year olds received trees to decorate themselves. As I was cleaning the table afterwards I used my hands to sweep glitter off the table into a bowl - and my hands sparkled of course - so several of the children then became very sparkly as they rubbed their hands all over the table... It was lovely to see how CAREFUL one of the children put on her clothes to go home so that the glitter magic stayed on her hands!