Playing with torches at night in the fog and exploring shadows. Playing with fog drops on the trees in the morning.
351 – Torches and shadows
Wednesday 15 January. Foggy. 6°C
B wants to do a late-night challenge. She loves being out at night and she’s got a club tonight so we can do it on the way home. To both our delight it’s clearly getting foggy again as we head out and by the time I pick her up it’s really set in. There’s that blanket of quiet on top of everything. It feels eery.
B wants to do shadow puppets. We’ve brought two torches – a really strong big one and a smaller standard one. Big one is pretty rubbish at shadows. Too big. It amplifies everything but only big things make any impression. We consider working with what the street lights are doing with the trees instead but then find the little torch works beautifully. There are some lovely hiding places in the shadows. B goes off for a wander, exploring going away and coming back. We can both see each other thanks to the torches. We try shining them on our legs and they look funny.
We find a dark patch in the middle of the trees and try and get shadows to work with the 351 cardboard cut out we brought with us. B demonstrates how the sun goes round the earth and we find the shadows look much better when torch is behind and shadows in front than vice versa. It’s starting to spit rain so we start to head home but on the way we find we can make our legs grow longer and longer by moving the torchlight from behind the top of our heads down to our feet.
I’m wondering why we haven’t done this before. It was a lot of fun. We never really got to the shadow puppets but it’s good to have one stored up for a future date! Though I suspect torches won’t be the best option for that. Sun or moon light will work much better (see Shadows and rainbow play, 364, 335).
350 – Playing with fog drops
Thursday 16 January. Foggy. 3°C
It’s properly foggy this morning so we thought we’d get out before school and enjoy it. I say ‘properly’ foggy. There’s a fog warning out but, in the terraced streets where we live, it never gets really dense. It’s definitely atmospheric though. I’m pondering what we can do for our ‘350’. I write it out in big numbers on a piece of paper and think I can get B to walk away and see how easy it is to see it. We never get there. We head round to the bit of land behind the house and find that the trees are covered in massive droplets of water.
B: Can I shake those off?
Challenge solved! She starts shaking branches and the water droplets spatter everywhere. Then we work out we can put the sign underneath. As it hits it makes a brilliant tapping sound. B is giggling. There’s something about bending the branches back and letting go and seeing the water fly off that feels mischievous. We head up to school both in a great mood.
