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Fun with the Sun!
Sharon Katz Cooper
Children love patterns and nature gives us so many! As spring turns
into summer this month, encourage children to look around them at
the many leaves, flowers and other natural objects they see. Making
sun prints with objects gathered from the world around us can be a
fascinating and thought-provoking activity for children of many
ages. By choosing carefully and thinking about shapes and shadows,
you and your children can use the sun to create your own sun prints.
Photo-sensitive paper is inexpensive and can be purchased at many
craft stores or through
www.acornnaturalists.com . It can provide hours of creative
artwork with little mess or intensive supervision.
Encourage your children to gather objects that are relatively flat
with interesting patterns or edges. Ask them to think about the dark
and light patterns that will be created by sunlight. They could even
make predictions about the kinds of shapes that will appear on their
paper. This activity will have young minds thinking about contrast,
dark and light, and shapes and shadows.
Once you have done a couple of simple prints, encourage your
children to experiment. What happens if they layer objects on top of
each other? What if the objects are bulky and do not lay flat on the
paper – what kinds of images do those objects make? What if an
object is partially translucent? Encourage your children to think
about the difference between objects that are translucent,
transparent and opaque. What kinds of sun images will these
different objects make?
Older children may ask how the sun print paper works. This will give
you a chance to discuss chemical reactions with your children. The
sun print paper is a chemical reaction triggered by sunlight.
Once you have images that you like, you can use them to make cards,
wrapping paper decorations, scrapbook pages, book covers, or a
thousand other things.
Here’s What You Need:
• A package (or several) of sun print paper
• Natural objects of your choice
• A flat baking sheet
• Water
• Your imagination!
Directions:
1. Gather your objects, choosing things that have interesting and/or
clearly defined edges or patterns sunlight will shine through. Start
out with things that are relatively flat. They will lie better on
the paper and make a clearer image.
2. Place your paper on a baking sheet in a sunny spot, such as a
windowsill or outside on a balcony or front step.
3. Arrange your objects in a pattern you like. Cover them with the
clear plastic sheet included in the package.
4. Leave the paper in the sun for about 5 minutes until the paper
fades and turns almost white.
5. Rinse your paper in tap water for about one minute. Your patterns
should jump out.
6. Place your papers on newsprint to dry.
7. Admire your creations! Hang them up around the house, or use them
as decorations for other paper-crafting projects.
This Helps Develop:
Gathering objects and considering their shapes and patterns helps
develop cognitive skills by stimulating awareness, observation, and
reasoning. Comparing and contrasting items and the shadows they make
encourages the development of skills that will be useful for
science, art, and mathematics.
This activity also develops fine motor skills – the use of small
muscle movements in the hands that occur in coordination with the
eyes. Children build fine motor skills when parents encourage them
to select and gather their own objects with their hands, examine
them carefully and place them into patterns on the paper.
Social emotional development involves a child’s feelings of self
worth, confidence, and pride as well as their ability to get along
with others in a group setting. Children love to create something
that belongs to them, and that they can share with others. As you
make your beautiful artwork, your child will develop a sense of
achievement. If you encourage your child to describe the objects he
or she uses and the patterns she creates, you will also enhance your
child’s communication skills.
This monthly family activity series, “Hands-on-Kids!” is brought to
you by a partnership between the Children’s Museum of Northern
Virginia (CMNOVA) and FAMILIES Magazine. For more activities you can
do with your children to spark their love of learning, visit the
CMNOVA web site, www.cmnova.org
. On their web site you will also find information about the
Children’s Museum of Northern Virginia and how you can become
involved. CMNOVA is committed to building a place where our children
can freely explore and develop a lifelong love of learning. Sharon
Katz Cooper is a museum educator and freelance writer in Fairfax.
She is a volunteer with CMNOVA.
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