Tripping the light fantastic

What a wonderful job we have!
On Thursday we travelled to Parochial Primary School Ashton-u-Lyne to deliver our show Inside the Rainbow which is all about light and colour.

We couldn't believe that it is almost a year since we were first there but some of the children remembered us - which was great!
In two sessions the whole school including the nursery were able to experience one of our favourite shows.
Picture the scene - you enter the school hall which is in darkness and at the front you can see so many twinkling, spinning and colour changing lights - it is like a mini Blackpool!

The youngest ones were so excited but incredibly well behaved and sat through the whole show riveted - some were very brave and came out to help us.

Starting in the dark we explored natural and man made lights, looking at shadows on the way and experiencing all the colours of the rainbow with the wonderful rainbow glasses.

We were dressed in black with EL lighting which is very flexible and can be twisted into lots of shapes so we we were wearing it around us.

For the older ones we found out about the vocabulary used in light, we explored chemical colours, bio and chemi-luminescence and Helen showed off her super light sabre

We heard all about Helen's dog Monty who was given a lovely new ball for Christmas but it was red and as dogs don't see red very well we all decided that for his birthday she should buy him a blue and yellow one which he will be able to see really well!
The show finished with Helen illuminating hidden messages on the walls with a UV torch.

A very sensory experience for everyone and a super day for us all.

Christmas Science Extravaganza

The final leg of our Christmas science tour

So there we were on Friday of a super week of science. So far we had been in secondary schools but today we were off to St Thomas primary in Maghull.
For the Autumn term they had been studying electricity and light so as a final flourish to their term they had booked us for one of our  favourite shows Inside the Rainbow. The show explores light, how we power lights, colour and how we see so of course being so close to Christmas we took all our lights, lamps and even wore our fairy hairbands.

The school were in the middle of nativity performances so the hall was all set up for an audience and blacked out. We set up just in front of the stable and baby Jesus with angels in the background - not often you get to do that!
The first group to come to the hall was year 5 & 6 - so some serious science words in this show! We even discovered that dogs only see in blue and yellow so no use buying Monty that red ball, Helen!

During a short break we gathered the very youngest from reception to come for a special short session just for them - this was incredibly exciting and almost magical. One little girl was convinced we were fairies!

Then we had year 3 & 4 whose science knowledge was really great and their vocabulary brilliant

After lunch we had year 1 & 2 who thought the whole thing wonderful - one young man really wanted to get hold of some of the gadgets we had - and wondered if we had bought them from Blackpool!

We had about an hour left so spent a session doing hands on with year 5 who really loved being able to get up close to lots of our props and had a taster of next terms subject - materials.