Using the light table for small world pretend play can expand the sensory experience for kids. Take the outer space small world and the arctic small world for example. The light simply transforms the small worlds. I think they look more magical! So when I signed up for letter X for the Small World Pretend Play Ideas from A to Z series, I just knew that I had to try another small world on the light table. So I picked X for exhibit (focusing on the letter X sound here obviously), as in an art gallery exhibit. The result? A really cool art gallery small world that uses some of my mom's real artwork.
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Small World Play on the Light Table
For this small world, I used:
- Art slides - You could print off artwork on vellum for a similar effect.
- Wooden clothespins
- PLAYMOBIL people
- Fake plants
- Bench made out of LEGO bricks
I set up the art gallery by making a LEGO bench and decorating the gallery with some fake plants. I then used the wooden clothespins to hold up the art slides for the art exhibit. Then I set up the playmobil people to face the artwork.
My mom is a ceramic artist so she has done numerous exhibitions over the years. That means she has accumulated a whole bunch of slides of her artwork from years ago. She lent them to us a couple of years ago so that the boys could use them on the light table. So it's really neat to show the boys the art and tell them that my mom made the actual art pieces in the pictures.
I don't think we've ever taken the boys to an art gallery before, but we have certainly been to museums and looked at exhibits. So I played alongside them to model some art gallery type behavior. We looked at the artwork and discussed what we saw. Then we also talked about how the people could purchase the artwork if they wanted. Bonus: when you flipped our slides over, they had red dot stickers to mark them as sold. They had the red dot stickers because the actual sculptures featured in the slides were sold in real life. So the boys would discuss prices for the items and then flip the slides if one of the people bought the artwork.
A crocodile also crashed the art gallery, courtesy of my three year old. But that's okay, he ended up outbidding the lovely lady in pink on a particularly nice red cat sculpture. He ended up purchasing the artwork for like $1000 or something. Who knew crocodiles liked art so much!
Other Small World Ideas You'll Love
This post is part of the Small World Pretend Play Ideas from A to Z series hosted by Still Playing School.
