Color, Light and Shadows

We had all kinds of materials for exploring colors, lights and shadows- prisms, mirrors, color paddles, flashlights and the light board.  

We had a great time exploring and discovering.

Our prism in the window made some great rainbows when the sun shone through...

Mix It Up is an awesome interactive book. We love it and read it often.

We read it and then read Mouse Paint. It became a favorite for the week and probably for many weeks to come. We read it over and over and over again.

We used little furry mice for painting and mixing colors (just like in the book!) 

Keeping with the theme of mixing colors, we read Mix It Up again, and then we read Little Blue and Little Yellow, another charming book about color mixing.

Play dough in primary colors, was an invitation to play and mix. It was fun to watch the changes from red, blue and yellow. It was also a great workout for our finger, thumb and hand muscles.- a great pre-writing activity!

We read about shadows in Bear Shadow 

and Nothing Sticks Like a Shadow. 

Both books reinforced that we can never get rid of our shadows no matter how hard we try. We can't even run away from them! 

We used a lamp indoors to see our shadows. We danced a wild fandango (like in our book) 

and then sat still for our silhouettes. 

We saw our shadows outside when we went on our shadow walk (or should i say, "run":0). It was an overcast day so the shadows were kind of dim.

Most of us were hoping that the groundhog wouldn't see his shadow so that we could celebrate springtime coming. We read about Groundhog's Day in nonfiction book 

and then we read Ten Grouchy Groundhogs. 

We had groundhog puppets to play with as we sang:

I'm a little groundhog in my mound.

On February 2nd I come up from the ground.

If I see my shadow, it scares me.

Back in my hole I go to sleep.

If I don't see my shadow, springtime's here.

Hip Hip Hooray! We shout and cheer.

We had a tunnel to play in and pretend we were groundhogs. We sang and dramatized both scenarios...

It was cloudy and overcast here, so we were pretty sure we were in luck. 

Unfortunately, the news reported that the groundhog saw his shadow so we are "in" for six more weeks of winter.