Winter on the Light Panel

Collecting loose parts can be super fun. We have been using our light panel for the last year, but it is most fun during long, Winter evenings.

We organised our loose parts recently into seasonal colours and this is what we came up with. Go on the hunt for more blue and white items for your light play and store them by colour afterwards for easy organisation. 

Check your kitchen cabinet first, for translucent items like lids, jars, containers; you will be surprised with your finds. We started by simply collecting milk lids, recycle plastic clear containers, reusable ice cubes and some of our favourite TickiT education resources.

We used our TickiT Wooden Sorting Tray to store our Winter collection as the compartments are big enough to fit all the loose parts.  

Here are few activities, that you can try at home this Winter on your light panel:

1. Winter Wonderland

Create your own Winter Wonderland by adding your favourite figurines. We added Snowmen ice cubes, such a great find in one of the local discount shops.

2. Counting loose parts

Use your plastic clear cups and write numbers on them from 1-5 or any numbers you like. Encourage your child to find the right number of objects to put in the cup. You could also add tweezers or mini tongs to practice fine motor skills at the same time.

3. Frozen rescue

Check your kitchen cupboard for some clear empty food containers and hide your mini figures under them. They are perfect to use as frozen mountains.

You could also use jars and large clear bowls.

4. Emotion Loose Parts

We love activities around emotions; this time on the light table. We simply drew some faces on the cups with white board markers. Use your loose parts to represent your feeling.

5. Counting and patterns

Save any leftover cardboards from games or cards. They are fab frames for light panel.

Our activities: sorting colours and making patterns.

We also used ours for counting, with twenty places each, cut them in half to create ten frames.

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6. Sorting in containers

In our kitchen cupboard we found some clear containers, that we thought would be great for sorting activity. I’m sure you will find some treasures there too.

We organised our loose parts and we left mixed up bowl in the middle to sort using tweezers.

7. Adding

Another great keeper from leftover card games. This board made a great adding machine.

8. Sorting with beads

We used some beads to divide our light panel into fractions and to sort out loose parts. What a beautiful Wintery picture and it kept us entertained for a while.

9. Winter Mandala

Light panel is a fabulous tool to create Mandalas. 

10. Go Wild

Simply explore all your loose parts on the table: count, sort, create and have fun!

Thank you for reading and please find more activities with TickiT resources over at @the_treasure_babes. 

Written by Agata Marciniak, Early Years Teacher and mother of two.