Silhouettes (With a Twist)

We are experimenting with shadows this week to get ready for Groundhog Day tomorrow. The kids brought flashlights to school today and we made shadow puppets, which were a lot of fun! I also used the flashlights to trace their profiles on a piece of white paper. I used a pencil, because if they move just a tiny bit you almost have to start over, but I traced over the pencil line with a black Sharpie.

But instead of just cutting these profiles from black construction paper, as cool as that looks, I wanted the kids to do something different. So they each colored a coffee filter with markers. Then they put the filter on top of their profile and sprayed it with water.

They loved watching all the colors bleed together! After about 10 minutes, I took off the coffee filters to reveal the beautiful designs they left behind.

Then I cut them out and taped them to black paper. This really made them stand out.

I also put a little card in the upper left-hand corner with a question mark on it. I wanted the parents and other teachers to guess whose profile it was. Then they can open the flap to see if they are right!

My favorite part was hearing the kids talk about the colors. Several of them noticed they had colors on their paper that they never colored with originally! For instance, this girl only used purple and green markers. She was so surprised to see yellow after we took the coffee filter off.

Oh, I just love it! I wish I had traced their entire heads instead of just the faces, but it was hard for them to sit still!