Our favourite 3: Optics

Sensory perception is very important in children’s exploration of their environment so Optics is a wonderful STEM area to investigate. At Little Scientists we celebrate the discovery of STEM in the everyday: light and dark, shadows, colours, mirrors and reflections, light and plants, the sun and rainbows. With a strong connection to both their bodies and the natural world, children have an innate curiosity to explore these phenomena and more.

If you want to spark conversations about Optics, you may be interested in reading these books with the children:

Each peach pear plum invites the children to spy with their eyes. Visual perception meets mathematical concepts, allowing you to immerse yourself in spatial awareness, location, positional words and distances.

The colourful parade of observers being observed in Brown bear, brown bear, what can you see? is a great introduction to thinking about perception and perspectives. What can you see that I can’t see?

Most children’s lives are full of colours and The day the crayons quit celebrates every single one of them. There are so many things to discuss and investigate when it comes to colours: How many different shades of red are there? Why are certain things always red? Does the colour look different when you’re using a crayon, chalk, paint, a pencil or a pen? How can you mix colours?

We hope these books will allow you and the children to see the world with fresh eyes.