Dinosaurs shadows... and shadow exploration...

Yesterday was a busy day. Lots of ideas with the children surfacing - and then an evening full of mind expansion with Debi Keyte-Hartland.

In the morning we were looking at the dinosaurs on the wall again... I wanted to show the shadows in a way that would allow us to explore the other side of the wall, as one child was very sure that the image on the wall was the result of the dinosaur being on the other side of the wall (running around the swimming pool "eating all the children").

In the morning shadow exploration there were three main questions... that the children asked and that we explored just a little.... leaving room for a deeper exploration of each of these questions...

The first question was why the dinosaur on the OverHead was facing one direction but the shadow on the wall was facing the other direction. The diosaur was moved around... even put against the wall where the shadow matched... to be put back on the OH for the shadow to change direction again... we explored ourselvesin the big mirrors and looked at our name in the mirror... a connection was made... but we need to return and explore this again so that all the children can make the connection...

The children went to see behind the wall to see if there was a dinosaur there creating the image on the wall... half of the children saw nothing, half of the children saw dinosaurs... some saw T-rex, despite the fact it was a brachiosaurus shadow, and one saw a fire-breathing dinosaur with wings...
When I asked where the wings were on the shadow the child was able to point to where the wings were... (picture below)

The final question was why do shadows get bigger and smaller... we played a little with the positioning of the OH, and also moved the dinosaurs.

As we finished the session I asked the question... are shadows always black... and that in the afternoon they would have the opportunity to explore that (and think about it in between).

 Playing with colour and light - stacking so many on top of each other until the shadow became black/gray again. Magnetic tiles and ice-cream spoons. Exploring the wall to find the colour again...

 These shadows were not so colourful, but there were small rainbows if you looked carefully. They also gave you leopard skin!!

 Counting on the OH and then counting on the wall... then returning to the OH just to make sure one more time

 Creating colour shadows with the magnetic tiles... one child went to see if the shadows were magnetic too... they were not, it kept falling down.

More explorations with plastic bowls and trays, counters, transparent duplo, ice-cream spoons, glass beads

And today the children returned to the coloured shadow explorations - mermaids and plastic cups etc joining in the fun... this time some of the children were jumping into the light exclaining "fairy princess me", and then jumping out of the light exclaiming, "me again" - in and out of the light - being transformed by its colourful magic.