Solar paper and loose parts

I had some very old solar paper laying around. It says to use within six months, but we thought it still might be good after six years of sitting on a shelf. Solar paper allows you to record images of shadows. We did this early in the morning in January - the sun was very low in the sky so we got very long shadows. This meant when we first tried to make sunprints of blocks, the shadows were so big that they covered the whole paper. So, we went looking for some flatter objects.

We tried lots of different materials for making sunprints. The box of fasteners was by far the most interesting

Laying everything out and looking at the shadows.

When the blue paper turned white, it was time to bring it inside and put it in water.

Finished sunprint after developing in water -- notice how the shadows look 3-D - white areas were where no sun hit and the lighter areas are where the shadows were (but some indirect sunlight hit the paper)

Then she just played with the pieces.

This reminded me of the "Theory of loose parts" - an idea developed by an architect in the 1970's. He said, "In any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it." ~ Simon Nicholson, Architect

Loose parts are things that children can manipulate and use in different ways. In the current literature on pre-school education, as far as I understand, it has come to mean small objects that can be moved around from place to place and used in different ways -- much like the screws and washers in the fasteners box. But the original intention of loose parts seems to be something larger -- a principle of interaction. In his essay (can be read here), Nicholson advocated interacting, experimenting, building, inquiring and manipulating variables. The actual materials seemed to be less important.

Solar paper can also be used to investigate how well sunscreen blocks sunlight. To do this, place a piece of glass or plexiglass (e.g., flat glass baking dish) on the solar paper and smear the glass with varying types of sunscreen. The image created on the solar paper will show how well the sunscreen blocked the light.