windmills on the walls

I await the fixture of the windmills to the wall but here are some photos of the acetate windmills being made:

acetate being marked out and cut for assembling

showing the assembling

In actually fact I have put a nut on the screw before the washer, then the windmill then a washer and then another nut. This to to make sure the windmill sits out from the wall and should increase the life of the acetate windmills.

windmills for outdoor use

Three windmills have been made to sit atop of the narrow pipes on the left hand side of the wall. The idea is that they will look like flowers.

design for small pipes © 2012 Roisin Markham

location on wall for windmills...

I can't wait to see them up and working, plus the golden wheel for the kinetic Sun!

Fire - light/Sun

For under 5 years old fire is a big safety issue so we talked about light and sun.
I brought in a window crystal that refracted the sunlight into spinning rainbows.
It was amazing to see each child in turn try to catch the ethereal light.
The tricky piece was no sun in the play ground before 12 so we had to go to the car park which is unused space fine for the older group but not suitable for the preschool class.

light reflecting & refracting #betterspace

We also covered plastic plates with tin foil. The idea was to bounce light and reflect it like you would with a mirror - but because of health and safety reasons I could not use mirrors. I thought this would work better but the sunshine was not continuousness enough.
What did work really well was this was the week before Halloween so there had been talk of fire in both classes and the older room had a pumpkin hollowed out with a candle in it - which was a perfect tie in.