Teaching Expertise

Check out 13 captivating activities that assess assorted materials’ ability to filter light! Whether your learners are of preschool or middle school age, they’ll love getting stuck into our collection of tactile experiments! As they explore transparent, translucent, and opaque materials, they’ll have the chance to get familiar with the concepts of light and shadow! 

1. Material Sort

Brace your students for an object extravaganza! Task your learners with dividing an array of items into categories of either transparent, translucent, or opaque. A paperclip, stone, or glass bead are great examples of varied objects that you can include. 

Learn More: Science Buddies

2. Shadow Play

Learners will love dancing with shadows as they use varied objects to cast shadows. As they play, spark a discussion about how transparency, translucency, and opacity influence the form of the shadows.

Learn More: Science Buddies

3. Light Box Exploration

Illuminate your students’ curiosity by incorporating a lightbox into your lesson! To observe how light interacts with and affects different materials, encourage your students to play around with plastic sheets, glass slides, and tissue paper. 

Learn More: Learning And Exploring Through Play

4. Light Maze

Challenge your students to navigate a maze of their own creation to gain insight into how light behaves! Using materials with varying degrees of light passage, have your pupils guide the source through the maze. 

Learn More: Science Sparks

5. Light Reflection

The world is often thought of as a mirror, but very often we don’t consider what it’s capable of reflecting apart from our appearance. Set up mirrors alongside transparent, translucent, and opaque materials before inviting your learners to delve into the differences in light reflection. 

Learn More: Leverage Edu

6. Science Journal

Urge your pupils to chronicle their observations in a science journal. By doing so, they’ll be able to reflect on their learning and recall any surprises that were unearthed during their experimentation process.

Learn More: Teach Starter

7. Picture Sorting

A picture is worth a thousand words! Conduct a fun picture sorting session during which your students can sort through a medley of images to sort into categories of transparent, translucent, or opaque.

Learn More: Twinkl

8. Building Structures

Get those thinking caps on as you prepare to engage your kiddos in a mind-bending building endeavor! Task them with creating structures using blocks, tissue paper, and cardboard whilst paying careful attention to the passage of light. Can they construct a translucent tower or even craft an opaque obelisk?

Learn More: KC Edventures

9. Light and Shadows Art

Invite your learners to create art with light and shadow! Using transparent, translucent, and opaque materials, they can focus on the interplay of light and shadows as they develop their masterpieces.

Learn More: The Imagination Tree

10. Light Absorption Experiment

In this experiment, students must investigate how materials absorb light and how, in turn,  this affects their transparency, translucency, or opacity. 

Learn More: YouTube

11. Material Scavenger Hunt

Set your learners loose on a thrilling scavenger hunt during which they must find classroom objects that demonstrate transparency, translucency, and opacity. 

Learn More: Docsity

12. Material Comparison Chart

Enlist the help of all learners in creating a classroom comparison chart or graph that can be hung on the wall for learners to refer to when comparing materials based on their transparency, translucency, and opacity. 

Learn More: Play Osmo

13. Light Filter Experiment

How does the view of the world change through tinted lenses? Have your kiddos experiment with different filters like colored cellophane, candy wrappers, and sunglasses to observe their effects. 

Learn More: YouTube