Welcome to Incy Wincy Babies online – where the Incinerator Gallery comes to you.

This month our Barking Spider Visual Theatre artist Laura invites you to join in this creative activity from the comfort and safety of your own home.

Please take a photo or video of your artwork and share it on Instagram, Facebook, or our Facebook Group Incinerator Gallery Incy Wincy Babies.

Use the hashtag #IncineratorGallery so everyone can share just as we do during the program at Incinerator Gallery.

Shadow Play: Familiar becoming unfamiliar

This month’s baby play is an exploration of light and transformation. This activity offers ideas to investigate familiar objects becoming unfamiliar through the use of light and shadow.

To begin you’ll need to collect some objects. Look around your home, where you baby sleeps, where they eat, where they have a bath, where they play, and collect a handful of items that your baby is familiar with – for example: a ball, you baby’s favourite cup, a spoon, a rubber duck – you can really use anything.

You will also need to find a room you can controil the light with a plain wall and a torch. Monitor you little one when using the torch so they don’t accidentally shine it in their eyes. Place your objects in front of the wall one at a time and explore the shadows they create by shinning the light on them.

As you and your baby or toddler explore notice what happens to the shadows if you take the torch far away from the object and what happens if you bring it close? Try lighting the object from the side, how does that change the shadow? What does it look like if you constantly move the torch? How does the shadow change if you light the object from below or if you light it from higher up?

If you’d like to extend the activity, try placing objects in relationship with others. You could explore depth or create landscapes using the shadows of several objects. Glass objects will respond to the light differently too.

As always there’s no right or wrong way to explore and play. Laura encourages you to be playful and creative when selecting objects to work with and discovering the kinds of shadows you can create! Have fun.