Today, we are joining in on the Kids Fort Building Challenge with Building Blocks and Acorns and 30 other awesome bloggers. Each day, a different blogger is sharing their creative kids fort with a certain fun theme. Today, Amanda of The Educators’ Spin On It shares how she encouraged some educational indoor play with her kiddos in a Light Exploration Fort. Let’s take a look…
Need a Quick Indoor Play Idea Today?!
My kids LOVE playing with light. We made these awesome number puppets last month to combine lights and math; adding in a kids fort brings the learning to a whole new dimension! Consider including a small fort to your dramatic play area or reading center, too.
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Setting up a Light Exploration Fort for Indoor Play:
We LOVE pop-up tents because they take up very little space. You just open them up and it’s an instant kids fort for indoor play! When you are done, they twist back into a small round flat shape. If you do not have a pop-up tent, then make a fort using clothes pins, a dark colored sheet, and your existing furniture. If possible, put the fort on a soft surface in a darker part of a room for best shadow results.
Making a Light Exploration Invitation to Play:
We like to let our kids lead learning activities. Gathering materials ahead of time and placing them in small baskets or bins creates an added excitement for learning.
Things to put in your light exploration basket:
- Small flashlights that kids can easily turn on.
- Colored transparencies for exploring color with light
- Small toys or shadow puppets for shadow play
- Triangular prism for exploring the colors within lights
- Books to read with the flashlights
Connecting Indoor Play with Learning
This activity is a wonderful time to introduce children to light vocabulary. Three words that we have introduced for this activity
- light source – The place where the light originates, in this activity – the flashlight.
- beam of light -The projection of light in a certain direction.
- shadow – A dark shape made by the object blocking the beam of light.
Teach the words to your child, and use them in a sentence. Incorporate the vocabulary into your daily play and soon they will be using the terminology, too!
Looking for More Indoor Play Ideas Using Kids Forts?
Head on over to Building Blocks and Acorns to see which blog to visit to find another fort ideas each day for the entire month of February!
More Ideas for Exploring Light with Kids:
What is your kids’ favorite indoor play? Do they like playing in and building forts? Share in the comments below!
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This post may contain affiliate links. Please see my disclosure policy.
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