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Share the Week’s Discoveries

Review the week’s explorations and ideas about shadows.

Using the photos and drawings from the Shadow Museum and the “How a Shadow Changes” chart, discuss this week’s activities.

Indoor and Outdoor Shadows

Compare indoor and outdoor shadows by asking,

  • How is making a shadow indoors different form making one outdoors?
  • Where do you like making shadows the best? Why?
  • What different kinds of light help you make shadows? (Sun, lamps, flashlights)

Changing Shadows

Remind children of what they did during All Sorts of Shadows, where they moved their flashlights to change the shape of their shadows. Display photos of the activity and ask,

  • What are some of the ways we made shadows change this week using the flashlight and the lamp?
  • How did you use your flashlight to change the shape of your object’s shadow?
  • Where did you hold your flashlight to make your object’s shadow disappear?
  • Where did you hold your flashlight to make your object’s shadow look really long?
  • How do the activities we did this week remind you of some we did last week? Does this activity remind you of the activities we did outside last week?  Do you remember when we traced shadows of objects and ourselves in the morning and then came back and traced our shadows later on?  How did the shadows change?

Changing Shadow Size

Using photos from the activity, ask children to recall how they made shadows grow and shrink this week. Have a volunteer explain what you did during Big and Little Shadows. Ask,

  • What happened when you moved closer to the light? What did the shadow look like?
  • What about when you moved farther from the light? Describe the shadow.

Recognizing Shadows

Have children recall the books Guess Whose Shadow? and Light and Shade, and the activity Shadow Match. Ask,

  • How were you able to match an object with its shadow?
  • What are some of the things that are the same about an object and the shadow it makes? What is different?

Tell children that next week you will be using shadows to tell stories, by making shadow puppets and shadow theaters.