Return to the dark... to play!

The value of repeating activities should never be underestimated.
Today we returned to playing in the dark with various light sources - with a few new ones added... and we could really see that this time the children were able to focus on experimenting more as they settled down from the buzz of the excitement - last week it was a scream-fest, it was high energy and it was running around and there was for the most part not a great deal of exploration (even though of course they WERE exploring and experiencing the newness of playing with lights in the dark) but by returning to the dark today the children were able to deepen their experience by testing things out - and using the camera as a source of creativity was very apparent - partly as they have seen the photo images from last week and also because as the children were exploring so did Ellen and I - in true Hawkins style we had a good mess about too - which inspired the children to try making light pictures too. Also testing if lights could shine through material and their own clothes as well as what happened when several light sources cam together.

Afterwards we talked about if they felt the dark was scary when they had played and laughed in the dark - and there was a resounding - no, the dark was not so scary when we were playing together.

using torches on the fibre-optics - there were torches and small coloured finger torches.

a new effect appeared when using a light source under a chiffon scarf

art in the air... like magic - this was a snail!

so many different kinds of light play and exploration - it was hard to try and capture everything and there were many discoveries that I simply did not capture on camera - for instance light colour mixing on the white walls.

creating scary monsters with fleece blankets and light eyes shining through...

fibre-optic exploration

the great thing with the fibre optics is that you did not need the camera to see the special effects - it actually looked like this - flowing, moving - was it fairies?

tummies glowing as one of the light globes was stuffed up a top