Playing with light

We are all pretty sick at our house with bad colds, Lucas and Sophie are needing lots of ventolin to keep the asthma attacks away and Sophie's chest sounds pretty awful at times.  So we watched a movie this afternoon and just laid low. 

We watched Rio, which is awesome by the way and Sophie seemed to pay attention to some of the singing and action scenes.  This is pretty big because she has never paid any attention to any big movie before that wasn't the wiggles.  We were going to switch it at the beginning because we discovered Lucas had watched it with his Oma last week but he insisted that we watch it because this was Sophie's first real movie.  He had remembered that I thought Sophie would like it because of all the colours and great songs when Lucas and I saw it at the theatres.  I was really proud of him for thinking of her like that!

Tonight I was feeling like Sophie and I needed to find something new to play with as she was getting a bit bored with the regular stuff we often play with.  So I grabbed some random stuff and rigged up an active learning board for her.

You can use anything to put the black felt on, I used a book stand.  I use black felt because it helps the items in front of it stand out.  Sophie has a severe vision impairment and this type of activity is great for her.  She didn't disappoint, Sophie was very interested in the items I chose which we play with often, but not with the light box.

I found a light box at the salvation army this summer for 25 cents, it was great for lighting up the shiny objects against the black background.  The colours cycle through slowly and you can use this to project on the ceiling or wall as well.  I also have a light box that is activated by noise but the batteries were dead :p

I used some shiny beads, a wind catcher that is shiny and a bell shaker.  All these items make a little noise on their own or when knocked together.  Sophie reached for these toys for over 10 minutes while I held the light box towards it.  It was dusk outside so the effect was quite good.

The above photo shows how the light box catches the reflection of the shiny objects.

Sophie was concentrating very hard!

The next thing we tried was a bin full of glass beads with the light shining on them.  I got this idea from the home page photo at play at home mom.  She uses a full size light box but the one I have worked just as well (Christmas lights would also be great!)

The pictures aren't great because I didn't use a flash and I don't have a tripod but it shows the effect.  Sophie was very curious about the bin and did try to put her hand in it once or twice with a little encouragement. 

I bought the glass beads (on clearance for 30 cents a bag) at Michael's last week.  I found a bunch with glitter in them so they were perfect and added an element of reflection.   I just stuck the light box on it's side right in the bin and lowered the whole thing beside her mat so that she could get her hand in it.

 Kids with CVI need slightly different toys to peak their interest and I think these were a success.  I will try again soon with different items from our play bin.