Solar Prints

I remember as a child my mother and I purchased a solar print kit. It is funny the details one can remember of certain things. I actually remember the exact store we bought it at. Anyway, I was so fascinated by it. I remember collecting flowers and leaves and such to leave on it and leave the papers in the sun. My memory is for hours, but I don't know now. I decided to buy one of these kits at Lakeshore Learning to show Hazel a bit about the sun. (Sorry they don't sell them on their website.)
It was a bit different than what I remembered. It came with prints you could use or you could use any flat thing you found. At first I didn't buy the flat things (back from my memory I didn't worry about flat things), so we tried pine cones, acorns, sticks, etc. things from our nature table. I didn't bother trying to use the clear covers it came with either since the non-flat things would not fit in them.
They also said to leave it in the sun for 1-5 minutes until the paper turned white. Then you needed to soak it in hot water and then cold and then dry. As you can see my 3-d objects were more blotchy than anything. We also left them for a few hours in the window since we started this project just before we had to leave. Since it is winter and our sun is not too strong right now, I figured we would be ok.
We also tried a paper heart and a doily. Then tried flat objects like a feather, pine needles and some of the prints that came with the kit. We used the clear plastic holders for these. I also watched these more closely.

These came out much clearer, so I guess with this kit flatter is better.

Hazel was not as excited as I expected, but she is still young for it. We will try it in the summer and see what fun things we can use.

Our next project will be to do some things with shadows as Hazel is showing great interest in shadows.
Now we can make them into cards and what not. The kit came with cards and envelopes and some of the prints they gave us were words like Happy Birthday.

Hope you will join us for Sharing Saturday tonight/tomorrow!! Last week was our largest one thus far and hopefully this week we will break that record!

7 comments:

  1. Neat-o! I've never seen those before! Thanks for sharing at the party!

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  2. Hi. I found your post through the Fun Stuff Fridays Linky. Thank you for sharing this, we bought a packet of these for Christmas and I haven't created an activity around them. I am inspired and looking forward to it. We bought ours through "discount school supply" on-line if you are intersted in a link?

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  3. these turned out beautifully. I must try this. maybe i'll wait until its a bit more sunny

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  4. I love solar prints, what a fun activity! I have just received The Versatile Blogger Award, and have passed one on to you as well, you can head over to my blog to check it out. :)

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  5. This is such a wonderful idea ~ I am inspired to try something similar for sure! And what a great science/nature exercise all wrapped up in fun!

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  6. I have never heard of solar prints before. What a fun idea! Thanks for linking up to Fun Stuff Fridays on Toys in The Dryer!

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  7. A great post with out doubt. The information shared is of top quality which has to get appreciated at all levels. Well done keep up the good work.

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