Reflection

What do we know about reflection?
- We have a disco ball in our classroom. When the sun hits the disco ball, the sunlight bounces off the mirrors and makes dots all around our classroom.
- When light hits a mirror, it bounces off and makes a reflection.

What types of materials reflect light ?
- DVDs, mirrors, prism, glass, magnifying glasses

Making Shadows

We love to make shadows.  You need light to make a shadow.
By Kindergarten Room 1

The blog post above was our shared writing for the day. The children decided what to say and helped me to spell the words. Before publishing we talked about how "kid spell" is perfect for us in kindergarten but if we are going to publish our writing, that means other people will be reading our writing. And that means that we have to use "book spell".

We spent time in the dark room again today making shadows. We learned that:
- you need light to make a shadow
- you need to be in front of the light to make a shadow
- our shadows got bigger the closer to the light we got
- in order to get rid of our shadows we had to go behind the light

After playing with shadows in the dark room, we tried making shadows using the projector and the Smart Board. I introduced two "Scientist" words to the children; opaque and transparent. We learned that a shadow is actually the absence of light. Things that are opaque make black shadows because the light cannot go through them. When light can travel through an object, it is called transparent. We noticed that some of the items we chose to experiment with were transparent but the white light from the projector went through the item (i.e. coloured cellophane) and that colour showed up on the screen. One student selected a mirror to experiment with. As predicted, the mirror was opaque and created a black shadow...but what an amazing discovery when we all noticed that the mirror reflected the light! Tomorrow we will play with reflection.

Playing with Light

Our class has become interested in light and shadows thanks to our new overhead projector centre. The students love creating designs on the overhead and figuring out what will show up in colour and what will be black. Today we went into "the dark room" across the hallway that does not have any windows. We turned off the lights and used flashlights to explore light. Here are some things we noticed:
- I noticed that when I covered the light with my hand, my hand turned red!
- When you go close to the wall, the light gets smaller.
- When you go far away from the wall, the light gets bigger.
- When I put my hand in front of the light, I can make shadows.
- Light goes in a straight line.
- I wonder why I can see my blood when I put the flashlight on my hand?

This is what we look like with light from above.

Playing light tag.

Our red hands.

We look spooky when we are lit from below!