Experimenting with light and reflection provides young children with opportunities to explore and develop their natural curiosity about the world around them. There is something magical about the combination of light and beautiful materials that invite children to creatively interact and explore. A light table’s calming influence invites sensory exploration and provides opportunity for sustained levels of engagement for children.
What might student engagement look like for our youngest learners?
- Collaboration and working together
- Cooperation and problem solving
- Focused attention to task and detail
- NOTICING the work of others
- Leaning in for a closer look
- Inviting others to participate
- Enthusiastic, joyful response
- Exploring the properties of new materials
- Persistence and taking risks
- Whispering, conversation and laughter
"The children were exercising higher-order thinking skills such as: collaborating, negotiating, adapting, directing, organizing and creating.”
In our early childhood classroom, students worked intently for an entire morning to carefully cover the entire light table surface with beautiful jewels inside a red perimeter. Some children stayed with the task the entire time and others moved fluidly in and out of the experience. The children were exercising higher-order thinking skills such as: collaborating, negotiating, adapting, directing, organizing and creating. Documenting learning and making it visible encourages deep reflection of the learning process in our youngest learners.
– Vicki Jacobs, Little Jags teacher
Suggested further reading:
Parents Magazine: Your Growing 3-Year-Old
Children’s Engagement within the Preschool Classroom and Their Development of Self-Regulation