Weekly Activity

Our activities section suggests things for you to do with your children. Most of these will have educational value, which we'll point out. However, the main idea is just to have fun with them. We'll also suggest ways you can extend them.

Kaleidoscopes

Kaleidoscopes are among the most magical of children's toys - yet they are surprisingly simple to make (though the youngest children may need a bit of help). There's a remarkable amount to be learned from them, too! You will need: A narrow cardboard tube, such as the inner from a roll of kitchen paper. (It's generally thought to be unwise to use toilet roll tubes these days, for reasons of hygiene.) Three strips of plastic mirror tile, a little shorter than the tube and a couple of centimetres wide (the exact width is not terribly important, but they must be narrower than the diameter of the tube). You can also use glass, though more care is needed over safety. You could also try tinfoil rubbed down over cardboard, or strips of metal (making sure the edges are smooth).

• Masking tape or packing tape
  
• Cardboard
  
• Tracing paper or grease-proof paper
  
• Scrap paper
  
• Scissors
• Glue or pasteGlue
• Pen
• Paper, sticky backed plastic, felt pens etc for decoration (optional)
• Cellophane or other transparent plastic, or small transparent beads etc (for the extension ideas)

What to do:

Make a template by drawing round the end of the tube on the scrap paper. Now make another circle round that, about an inch larger all round, and cut it out.

Using the template you've just made, cut one circle out of the grease-proof paper and another out of the cardboard.

Using the masking or packing tape, fix the mirrors together so that they form a prism shape (Diagram 1) with the shiny side of the mirrors facing in.

Put the prism into the tube and tape it in place (Diagram 2). It really doesn't matter if the prism is off centre, which is why I haven't been specific about the width of the mirrors.

Tape the circle of grease-proof paper over the end of the tube, folding the excess paper round the barrel of the tube. Make sure you don't get any tape on the end of the tube.

Do the same with the cardboard at the end other end of the tube, then make a small hole in it.

Hold the kaleidoscope up to the light - as you move it around, you should see strange symmetrical patterns.

Extend this by:

Dropping a few small transparent beads or bits of paper (eg, sweet wrappers) into the prism. *WARNING: take care they don't fall back into your eye - you might want to tape a piece of clear plastic over the eyehole for safety*

Working out how to make the sort of revolving endpiece some commercial kaleidoscopes have.

Finding a way to make a compartment at the end of the kaleidoscope to hold the beads etc.

Educational Insights

-Instead of starting with the idea of making a kaleidoscope, give your child one to play with. Discuss how your child thinks it might work. Take it apart. Now how does she think it works? After you've made your kaleidoscope, talk about how close her theories came to the reality.

-Introduce appropriate mathematical and scientific language: prism, tube, cylinder, reflection, symmetry.

-Play with the mirrors and the leftover mirror tile - what can you and your child discover about reflections? What happens if you look in a curved reflective surface (like a spoon or the side of a saucepan)?

-Talk about symmetry - lateral symmetry, rotational symmetry, axes of symmetry etc

-Investigate colour mixing by addition, by looking through the coloured cellophane and putting different colours on top of each other.

-Explore art ideas arising from symmetry and colour patterns, using paints, pencils, felt pens and crayons, and also the coloured cellophane or tissue paper.