My 3-year-old daughter loves to play with flashlights.  She’ll carry them from room to room, turning off lights, and organizing “sleep over parties.”

We often make shadow puppets with our fingers.

Then, this morning, she happened to put down the large flashlight next to a yellow sippy cup full of apple juice.  And, lo and behold, the light cast a yellow shadow on the wall behind the cup.

Oooohhhh….. project!

So I grabbed some red and blue sippy cups from the kitchen, filled them with water, and we lined them all up in the room to see how their shadows would look.

Mostly, the 16-month-old was interested in drinking from all of the cups.  What can I say?  She’s my eater.  Food = more exciting than shadows to her.

Anyway, we made shadow finger puppets in front of the red, blue, and yellow shadows.  We moved the cups closer to and farther from the flashlight to watch the shadow get bigger and smaller.  We moved around the cups to see where they had to be in relation to the flashlight to cast the brightest colors.  We made new colors by overlapping the shadows.

Lots of learning, but it just seemed like fun to the girls:  the best kind.  :)

{{{This was originally posted at roamingrosie.blog.com, but I’ve since transferred my blog here}}}