Light & Dark - The Sun / Bouncing Light

Working through the suggested targets from the National Curriculum, we discussed the importance of not looking directly into bright lights and why (we took turns to look into each other's eyes while looking in and away from a light to see how the pupil grows and shrinks accordingly) and in particular the sun, then I asked the girls to draw a simple poster to summarise this information.

This is their first time making a poster (they didn't even know what one was!) so we first skimmed through some of their non-fiction books to talk about which layout features made the text inviting and easy to read, so which features did they want to copy for their poster... We came up with the use of pictures, bright colours, boxes and borders and simple sentences. I showed them a piece of A4 paper and asked them which was more effective - to squeeze everything into one corner or to spread it out over the whole page by writing and drawing larger than usual... They answered with the second option! Then I left them to it as A needed a nap.

Tbh I wasn't expecting masterpieces from them since they were doing it for the first time and unsupervised, so I was pleasantly surprised with the results!

The next week we focused on the fact light bounces off everything (revision: which is how we see things) but shiny surfaces seem to reflect more (not getting into the full details at this stage!). We talked about which kinds of materials tend to be shiny (glass or metal, sometimes plastic... Water! e.g. puddles, the sea) and focused in particular on mirrors. How do they work? We can see our reflections because the light bounces off the mirror's shiny surface.

In the 6th Famous Five book, Five on Kirrin Island Again, Julian advises his uncle to use the sun's light and a mirror to signal from far away (we learnt a new word here: heliographing!) so I thought it would be fun for the girls to try and do some heliographing of their own.

We were fortunate with the weather this week in November and headed to the Botanical Gardens where I knew they would have a safe, wide open space in which to have a go! I gave them a mirror each, and a walkie talkie so we wouldn't have to keep shouting to each other, and spread out over the main lawn with one twin at the top of the hill, one at the bottom near the bandstand, and myself, Z and A wandering around in between. It was a little tricky for them to catch the sun's light in a way for their sister to be able to see it, but a great practical experiment into understanding how light travels in straight lines and a subtle introduction to the idea of angles of incidence/reflection. 😁

After a good play around with mirror signals, the girls did some backwards walking through the gardens using the mirrors to see where they were going! And, of course, we ended our day with a trip to the playground. 😀