“Saaliha, come with me to the light table,” Evelyn whispers. “I have to show you something!”

Hand in hand, the two preschoolers quietly make their way over to our light table. This darkened corner of our classroom never fails to mesmerize the children with its soft glow and luminous colors.

As the days grow shorter and darker—and the hectic holiday season approaches—it’s the perfect time to engage children in calming investigative play with light and color.

Before we gather around the light table, I dim the lights in the classroom and put on some soft music to create a soothing and tranquil setting for the children, who are often overscheduled, tired and anxious during these busy December days.

“Look!” says Evelyn. “I took a play silk from our dress-up bin and put it on the light table!”

Evelyn moves over to make room for Saaliha at the light table and the two friends immerse themselves in STEAM collaboration, problem-solving and investigation. The girls are completely absorbed in their play—and the learning is enhanced by the presence of a friend and collaborator.

“That’s cool!” says Saaliha. “It makes everything look a little different, but you can still see all of the different colors!”  

The light table allows for open-ended play, where children can experiment and create without strict guidelines. This type of play fosters the development of creativity and problem-solving skills as the children follow their curiosity, devise their own experiments and draw their own conclusions. This child-led play also fosters an investigative mindset, which can lead to hours of exploration and discovery.

“Try this!” Evelyn suggests as she shows Saaliha how to duck under the silk to compare the views. 

The girls experiment with different color combinations and share their theories and discoveries. The light table always seems to spark curiosity and encourages children to ask questions and seek answers.

As more children join the investigative play, they expand their knowledge base by collecting data and adding probability to their investigative skills.

This is a shared space that encourages collaborative investigations. Collaboration fosters communication skills, teamwork and the ability to share ideas with peers.

Children work together to create patterns, build structures and explore different materials—a process that helps foster the development verbal and social skills.

The hands-on nature of these activities promotes a deeper understanding of mathematical principles through play.

Children can investigate fundamental mathematical concepts such as counting, sorting, patterns and shapes on the light table. 

These long play periods extend the learning as the group explores spatial relationships, patterns and sequencing, laying a foundation for more advanced mathematical thinking.

Play at the light table is naturally enjoyable for young children. The combination of vibrant colors, interactive materials and the freedom to explore creates a positive and joyful learning experience that can contribute to a lifelong love of learning. 

Light tables allow children to learn at their own pace, which makes the play developmentally appropriate for every early learner. The children build on their own knowledge and share their observations with others.

When children are making observations and discoveries, they are forming and testing hypotheses. These self-directed learning experiences empower them to continue to explore and investigate beyond the classroom.

So turn on that light table and watch the magic of play and discovery brighten the day! 

As the days grow shorter and the slanting rays of sun that create our rainbows are replaced by clouds, we shift our energy to other forms of investigative play with light and color.

“Saaliha, come play with me at the light table!” Nora calls out.

Saaliha joins her friend and the STEM investigations into light, color and reflection continue.

“Watch what happens when I put all of the reds together,” instructs Nora. “But look! It’s not really red. It’s pink! Ta-da!”

Saaliha is immediately drawn into this color exploration. I watch as Nora moves over to make room for Saaliha at the light table and the two friends immerse themselves in STEM collaboration, problem-solving and investigation.  

“It is pink! Can I have the red one?” Saaliha asks. Nora passes a transparent half-sphere her way.

The girls experiment with different color combinations and share their theories and discoveries.

We love our light table because it never disappoints, stimulating long periods of intense play as the children lay translucent objects one over the other.

Light-table play can be a calming, absorbing experience for a child, and the learning is often enhanced by the presence of a friend and collaborator.

These explorations of color and light also offer opportunities to assess the children’s predictive abilities. As the children expand their knowledge base through trial and error, they collect “data” and add “probability” to their investigative skills.

Everything and anything translucent can be used in light and color play. We add a variety of colored translucent tiles to the light table, cut cellophane sheets into shapes to create mosaics and layer translucent paddles to create new and sometimes unexpected colors.

We add bingo chips and clear and colored gemstones to the mix to encourage counting and sorting by attributes.

Translucent blocks and Magnatiles inspire the children to create 3-D structures and see the interplay of light, color and reflection in three dimensions.

I keep baskets of loose parts near the light table so that the children can use them for unstructured, self-guided play.

I also stock up on non-traditional items such as cocktail stirrers, colorful shot glasses and reusable plastic ice cubes at the dollar store. While these objects may look more like happy-hour supplies than learning tools, they represent a treasure trove of loose parts to children. Sea glass is also a great idea. In short, if it’s translucent, add it to your light-table area!

I rarely tell children how or where to play with toys. Occasionally, children will bring wooden blocks or other non-transparent toys over to the light table area. Out of respect for their creative process, I’ll allow it—unless, of course, the objects are heavy enough to damage the light table. These non-translucent objects are an important part of the children’s investigations. All objects look different when lit from above and below, and when viewed from different angles. This open-ended approach to play gives the children more latitude to create and investigate with color and light.

A few of my students are developmentally ready to start learning the alphabet. Some recognize letters, while others just perceive the letters as shapes. I make sure that the letters are accessible to my early learners at all stages of brain development and leave it to the children to make up their own rules for letter play.

Sometimes we add a play silk to the light table, which changes the children’s perspective and introduces new ways to play with light, color and reflection.

The light table supports our students as they make observations, think scientifically and collaborate with their friends while investigating new ideas and theories.

I love this learning tool because it’s always developmentally appropriate. The children build on their own knowledge and share their observations with others.

When children make their own observations and discoveries, they are forming and testing hypotheses. These moments of learning empower them to continue their exploration and investigation outside of the classroom.

This self-guided exploration paves the way for inquiry-based learning. So turn on that light table, trigger some curiosity and watch the magic of play and discovery brighten up your day!

So far, we’ve seen what it takes to prepare an exploration, a graphing progression, and a discussion about what kind of questions can be centered around an exploration. To wrap up our month, I’m going to extrapolate from a specific example to a general framework for explorations.

A General Framework for Explorations

One of the most fundamental aspects of an exploration is the materials the students use. In the graphing exploration, the materials mainly stayed the same, index cards or paper pie slices and tape. Other explorations, however, can be greatly varied based on the material. For example, say I wanted to lead an exploration about how textures impact painting. If I wished to alter the materials, I would change what they used. Maybe one day we would paint on standard paper, then silk to see a smooth texture, and then painting on tree bark to see how that differed. Conversely, we could paint every day with a different substance mixed into the paint (rice, sand, and then flour) to see how the texture of the substance affected their art. Especially with young children, they are very sensitive to changes in the physical materials they use and benefit from these varied exposures. In my experience, these are the easiest pieces of an exploration to change.

A second aspect of an exploration that can be altered is the constraints placed on the students. Constraints, as generally understood, are restrictions on how students can use their materials. This is an overlooked aspect, as teachers generally only restrict the final product students can create or the general amount of time that can be spent on an activity. This is shortsighted, as there are incredibly nuanced and powerful changes that can result from properly applied constraints. In the graphing exploration, the class had constraints based on who they could vote for, how they voted, and the representation of their votes. To continue with the painting and texture example, students could paint with their eyes closed to see how the slick paint felt when spread over the rough paper. While the distinction between materials and constraints may be nebulous at times, it remains a valuable lens through which to view explorations.

The final aspect of an exploration is the focus of the students, which is directly impacted by you the educator. Through your questioning, you help students realize what they should be paying attention to or thinking about in an experience. To be clear, students can and will surprise you by noticing things you never expected, but it is also important to plan an exploration around key questions and vocabulary. For example, in the graphing exploration, I drew students attention to the relationships between the numbers of votes instead of just who had more. In the painting and texture example, the focus would include questions like “How does this feel different than that” and “How did this texture affect your painting”. Focus work would also include highlighting vocabulary that would be useful, like ‘rough’ or ‘smooth’ in the texture example. This questioning and vocabulary should expand as the exploration progresses, encouraging the students to think more deeply or analytically about the process.

Some Examples of the Framework in Action

In general, I have found it best to alter either the products OR the constraints day to day, not both. This allows the students to more easily reflect on a specific change from the prior activity. This is not a hard and fast rule, just a general guideline.

In order to provide a launching off point for future explorations and help explain the three aspects of an exploration, here are couple of examples of explorations and how their aspects can be modified.

Building

-Materials: unit blocks, legos, paper towel tubes, rocks

-Constraints: goal (height, representation of specific object, volume), time limits (15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute), blindfolded, only using one hand

-Focus: “Is it easier to have a wider base or a narrower base?”, “Do you think you’ll be able to build as much in 30 seconds as you did in 1 minute?”, balance, symmetry

Color

-Materials: shading paint (a single color with black and white paint to alter shade), colored paper, stained glass (tissue paper on a light table), magnetiles and flashlights

-Constraints: painting in colored lenses or light, painting in dim light (colors appear washed out and gray), colored shadows

-Focus: “How did you make that color, since I didn’t put out any orange?”, “Why doesn’t this look as red as it did on the white paper?”, shade, blend

Hopefully, with this framework and these examples, you’ll be able to take a great idea and expand it into a full-fledged exploration. After all, there’s nothing wrong with doing something fun!

It got me thinking about this time of year; going back to school, the beginning of fall, change in the air, kids growing up, and opportunities to do things a new way. Now is the time to make small changes in your classroom that can impact the children in meaningful ways.

My very good friend Alison has an artist’s eye and a great sense of style.  When I last visited her out in California, I fell in love with the way she organized her children’s books.  Rather than sorting them by author or title as most of us usually do, she organizes them by color.

You can see how the books create this rainbow effect on the shelves but more than that, this visual style of sorting is a wonderful way for young children – pre readers- to participate in the upkeep of the classroom library.

Most children are highly visual and remember books by their covers, colors, and pictures.  Most know their colors before they read, and are able to choose favorite books by their look rather than by title or author.  Imagine putting away books at clean up time, and rather than having the books stuffed haphazardly on the shelves, children are able to sort them on their own into their color family.  You can see that it is not an exact science.  The oranges flow into the reds and yellows, but it is not perfect and does not need to be.  In addition, this is a sorting system that supports young children’s early math development by asking them to consider where the books go based on a visual attribute and then sorting them just so.  I love this idea.