The Blue Dragon
Programme 12: Shadow Play

Aims

This programme aims to develop children's understanding of sources of light and shadows.

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Outline

The characters are to be found outside the walls of an ancient castle with the sun setting and casting shadows. The friends make scary shadow characters and a giant dragon shadow emerges, but as the sun sets the shadows gradually disappear.
A new animal character, an owl, is introduced and the characters explore mirrors and reflections and consider why the Moon can be seen when the Sun cannot be seen.

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Curriculum Relevance

The programme explores:

• light sources;
• making shadows;
• making shadows change;
• developing understanding that opaque materials can produce a shadow.

There are many curriculum links that can be made, for example:

• English – children could create a set of instructions explaining to someone else how to make a shadow puppet.
• Design and technology – design and make a shadow puppet.
• Drama – develop and perform a shadow puppet play.
• Music – children could create sound effects to accompany their shadow play.

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Background

Some materials are transparent, which means that they allow light through and images can be seen clearly. Translucent materials also allow light through, but less so than transparent materials, the result being that you cannot see images clearly through, for example, translucent glass. Opaque materials block light, they do not allow it to go through. This means that on the other side of an opaque object the area is dark, hence a shadow.

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Activities

Shadow activities in the classroom are most successful when children have access to an overhead projector (OHP). Allow children to bring to school a small soft toy or doll, for example a teddy bear. Using the OHP and screen allow children to explore making shadows with their toys and ask them to find out how they can make the shadow bigger and smaller.

In the Blue Dragon Resource Book there is a series of recipes for children to use at the back of the book. One of the recipes is for children to make biscuits using cutters of different shapes or animals to make shadow biscuits as shown in the recipe. The children could create animal biscuits and give them to a 'buddy' in the school who then evaluates the biscuit, giving feedback to say what they liked about it.

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© 4 Ventures 2004