The Firework-Maker's Daughter- Light
The Firework Maker’s Daughter by Philip Pullman is a good starting point for teaching about light. It follows Lila who wants to be a Firework-Maker! She finds out that every Firework-Maker must make a perilous journey to face the terrifying Fire-Fiend. Not knowing that she needs special protection to survive the Fire-Fiend's flames, Lila sets off alone. Her friends, Chulak and Hamlet - the King's white elephant - race after her. This tale of fireworks and friendship is a great setting for exploring the following ideas:
- we need light in order to see things
- dark is the absence of light
- light is reflected from surfaces
- light from the sun can be dangerous and that there are ways to protect their eyes
- shadows are formed when the light from a light source is blocked by an opaque object
Key scientific vocabulary: Light / Dark / Sources of light /shadows / path of light / beam of light
Other fiction books similar theme:
Keesha’s Bright Idea – Eleanor May
Can’t You Sleep, Little Bear? - Martin Waddell
The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark - Gill Tomlinson
Night Monkey, Day Monkey by Julia Donaldson
The Dark by Lemony Snicket
Do Try This at Home: the Light Collection
This series of Marvin and Milo cartoons, include eight simple experiments that children could either do at home or at school they include:
- A torch and a bottle to show total internal reflection
- A glass of water to make a lens
- Milk and water to show the scattering of light
- Tonic water to show fluorescence
- Refraction of light using vegetable oil
Teachers could use these postcards to form a carousel of short observational activities where children explore and make simple observations about the properties of light.
Making Shadows
In chapter 4 Lila falls deeper and deeper down a hole. As she does so she is plunged into darkness. Ask the children what causes darkness?
This activity, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, looks at how shadows are formed and what affects their size, direction and shape. The children can then ask their own enquiry questions about how shadows - for example do all shadows take the shape of the object casting them? What is the relationship between how near an object is to the light source and the size of the shadow? Does the material the object is made from affect the shadow?
Children could then make their own shadow puppets. This film shows a shadow theatre.
Human Sundial
This outdoor activity encourages children to look at their shadow at different times of the day and measure differences in its size and direction. This pattern seeking activity asks pupils to record their results in a table and in a bar chart or line graph, and to identify cause and effect.
Light
This resource from Physicists in Primary Schools introduces sources of light and how we see them, demonstrating how we see objects, reflection of light, composition of white light and primary colours.
The children could play with coloured torches to investigate which colours they can create with light. They could ask if combining colours of light is always the same as when you combine coloured paints or chalks?
The magic of light
This resource looks at light and its composition. Beginning with light sources, it then moves onto investigations exploring how white light can be split down to coloured components. To do this children can use a spectroscope which they can make themselves. The children can then create spinners and investigate which colours are needed to recreate white light again.
The children could discuss what the difference is between a rainbow and a firework. In a rainbow, the arc shows red on the outer part and violet on the inner side. It is caused by light being refracted when entering a droplet of water, then reflected inside on the back of the droplet and refracted again when leaving it. Fireworks are made from chemicals which when ignited, burn a certain color or make a certain spark effect.
