Monday, August 03, 2015

Humpty Dumpty Light Table Play

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This month's theme for the Light & Reflections Series is nursery rhymes and I have to admit that, at first, I was stumped on what to do. I ended up settling on Humpty Dumpty as the inspiration for this light table activity for kids. It ended up being much more amazing than what I had originally planned in my mind, but it encouraged lots of storytelling and color mixing exploration. And, more importantly, my kids loved it!

Light Table Activity for Kids Inspired by Humpty Dumpty

For this light table activity, I used:

Colored transparencies

Permanent marker

Scissors

Cut oval shaped eggs out of various colored transparencies. Then draw little Humpty Dumpty faces on them. They don't have to be perfect, just egg-like.

I originally intended to make egg puzzles for the kids to assemble on the light table. You know, so the kids could put Humpty Dumpty back together. So after I cut and drew the colorful eggs pictured above, I quickly took some photographs of them before I cut them into puzzles. Well, suddenly the kids swiped the eggs from underneath me and started playing. So I left the eggs as is and just watched them play with them however they wanted.

First, they layered the eggs and made different colored Humpty Dumptys.

The two boys even worked together while color mixing (notice the three hands below).

Five year old J even arranged them into a traffic light.

But then the really fun part started. J started making up his own version of Humpty Dumpty shortly after I stopped photographing. I had even put away my DSLR.

Now, J doesn't really do pretend play or storytelling (likely due to his hyperlexia and autism diagnoses), but he has been showing some growth in these areas. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised to see him act out an entire story of his own creation. To my surprise, that did not happen. Luckily, I had my phone nearby so I was able to capture some of his storytelling, which you can see below.