Having fun with indoor rainbows; making hand shadows and playing with cardboard cut outs in the sun; Working out how to make a hand shadow dog…and something eating grass; Making a window shadow picture… not quite quickly enough.

37 – Making a window shadow picture

Tuesday 25 November.  Sunny. 11°C

It’s gorgeously sunny and B and I are planning to do something with shadows when she gets home from school. We think maybe we’ll draw round them.

The problem is that by the time she gets home, the sun is disappearing fast. There’s none outside our front door at all. We realise it’s still in the upstairs front bedroom so we run up and find a new plan.

It’s making a perfect window shaped ‘picture’ on the wall. The little solar powered elf in the window is dancing and being reflected. We decide to make a Christmas picture instead. We run round the house looking for elves and reindeer and something that can be a Christmas tree. We set them all on the middle join of the sash window and it’s a perfect reflected Christmas scene. Then we go to make a 37 out of paper.

It turns out this is our downfall. We forget that the sun is MOVING. By the time we get back half the scene has disappeared as the sun goes behind the house opposite. Frantically we stick the 37 on the window and take a photo. A minute later the elves have completely gone and soon so has the window. We leave them up to get another photo the next day to see what it could have been… but the cloud and rain comes and we never do.

289 – More fun with hand shadows

Tuesday 18 March.  Sunny. 11°C

We’re at a bit of a loose end and searching round for a challenge. It’s a beautiful early spring day with lots of sunshine but we can’t find anything to collect and are out of ideas. I’ve been meaning to try again with shadows (see 335 below) for ages. We google options on the phone (hardly the best nature play but hey, needs must) and have a go at recreating what we find. There’s a cute bear cub one we both really want to do but neither of us can get it to work. The wolfs and dog heads are easier and we have fun with those. Then we work out we can use the grass to make them look like they’re chewing. We’re not sure what… I think it’s a dog but when the grass disappears it becomes a rabbit.

I’m feeling a bit more on top of hand shadows now. The sort of thing that’s useful on a lazy day when you have lots of time and nothing to do. The grass eating was really fun and I want to play with that more. Somewhere in the house we’ve got an old book, from when I was little, of how to make them. I plan to dig it out and put it with the camping things.

335 – School yard shadows

Friday 31 January. Sunny, 7°C

It’s a gorgeous sunny Friday and it feels like Spring is coming. After a week focusing on birds (see Bird Challenge week 339-336) and occasionally getting cross about it, it felt like we needed an easy fun challenge and the weather is really helping. There are long shadows and the potential for fun. I turn up at the school gates with a 335 cardboard cut out ready made and see what B can do with it. It takes her a while to work out how to hold it away and get the sun to shine through it.

I challenge her friends to do shadows – they all do butterflies. A grandad comes up with an amazing dog and says he used to be able to do an elephant. I think we might need to do a bit of a training session before we do this one again.

364 – Indoor Rainbow

Thursday 2 January. Sunny. 10°C

Its getting towards the end of the Christmas holidays and we’re travelling home after a week staying with various relatives. In between the rushing – the shortest challenge. I’m still working out if this is cheating but it was definitely a natural event even if it was inside.  The light caught the glass of the balcony and sent a rainbow inside onto the white door.   

B puts her hands in it first, then her feet. We try shadow puppets. She can do a bird and a rabbit.

Afterwards I wonder what else we could have done. Maybe we could have got some glass or a mirror and seen if we could reflect it? B drew a 364 on a bit of paper, cut it out and took a photo with the rainbow on it. Then we headed off to catch a train feeling energised and positive.

It will not be the longest challenge we do but on the second day of our endeavours it was a lovely piece of luck. Like the world was smiling on us and helping us along.

11 – Revisiting the indoor rainbow

Saturday 20 December. Sunny. 11°C

We’re only a few days away now from our second challenge on the 2 January 2025 when we found the rainbow inside my mums flat. It’s back! It must be a solstice thing because we haven’t seen it since. B is really excited and suggests we revisit our second challenge.

We know more hand puppets now (though we still have to look some up online). B’s perfecting her dog and duck. We also work out that if you move a piece of white paper from one end of the rainbow to the other it changes colour on the way. We apply our scientific minds and decide the cause of it must be the glass balcony. There’s a raw glass end which is just the same shape.