Perspectives: Mirrors

Perspectives: Mirrors Learning Group

“Broken” Images

Week of October 28, 2013

This week, I wanted to present the children with another way to see their reflections being changed or altered. So far we’ve explored with how other materials can affect our reflections and I wanted the children to see how mirrors by themselves can do the same thing. I positioned some smaller, rectangular mirrors on the felt board with Velcro. I left some space between the mirrors so parts of the children’s reflections would be ‘missing’. How would they react to this new perspective of their reflections?

The children all immediately went up close to the mirrors on the felt board. They looked at their faces and at each other in the mirrors. The children noticed some of their body parts seemed to be ‘missing’ due to the gaps in the mirrors and seemed confused at first. They moved their bodies around and moved closer to and away from the mirror to see how that would affect what they saw in the mirrors.  When I asked him why we couldn’t see his tummy, Oscar said “I don’t see it, it’s on the green part!” When I asked a few other children where their bellies were, they turned to me and pointed them out to me. The children seem to understand that even though they couldn’t see the reflection of their body parts, they were still there.

I think the children enjoy exploring their altering reflections and observing how they are different from just looking in a mirror at their faces. We have been looking into mirrors below us and in front of us and next week I would like to explore with a mirror above us. How will our reflection look differently than what we have seen so far?