Shadow Tracing

Curious George is a favorite at our house, which is where the ideas for many of our activities come from. In one episode George becomes a window washer on a skyscraper, but he gets distracted by all the shadows in the windows. Many times Nash, my 4-year old, will ask if we can do that, which was the case with this episode. It was very tempting to have them wash my windows, but instead we did shadow tracing outside.  

In the late afternoon, we put a writing board on the lawn with white paper over it. The boys picked dinosaurs to trace, so we put them on the white paper. They kneeled off to the side of the board and started tracing. After that I traced their shadows on the sidewalk with chalk. Then they traced Daddy's big shadow.

This activity is great to show how the shadows move. The connection was made between the shadows moving and the sun moving. The dinosaurs were left in place while we traced on the sidewalk to illustrate the moving shadows. We talked about what makes a shadow, and how we don't need the sun to make them. We need light, so the boys made shadow puppets in their room with flashlights.

This activity was also great for the boys to practice their tracing skills. They work on tracing letters and numbers, but this is far more fun with the same added practice. It also gets them outside.