Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

We are always looking for ways to repurpose, reuse and "upcycle."  After one of our family dinner excursions, I was inspired to make these DIY  Upcycled Translucent Blocks to use on our light table.  Please note that this post contains affiliate links.  When we go out to dinner, my family often entertains each other by building structures with the various things on the table at the restaurant while we wait for our food. We have made some very interesting towers and creations with the coffee creamers and the single serving jam containers. After one of our recent ventures, I was thinking about different things we could use to build at home... and voila..... the inspiration: Empty plastic baby food containers! However, I didn't just want to use them as is. I know they are fun to build with without doing anything with them, but I wanted to add some color and make a nice set for our light table. So, I gathered my supplies. (If you remember we have used the lids from these cont...

Since we revamped our light table , the children have been showing a renewed interest in playing with it.  The children have also been enjoying bird watching. (Remember the tube feeders and upcycled feeders we made?) So, I decided to print some birds for the children to play with on the table.  I found these amazing Winter Bird Drawings - A free printable- from Rebecca's Misc . I decided that rather than print them out on regular paper to use transparency film. Brilliant idea, right? Well, at first thought it was brilliant- but to make the birds last, I needed to take additional steps. Even with transparency film made for inkjet printers.... they smudge when children have wet fingers. So, I cut them out and laminated them to keep them from being ruined by little fingers. We now have an amazing set of translucent birds for our light table ! You can find our laminator, the pouches, and the transparency film on Amazon! Along with a great selection of birdi...

Last week, I gave you a sneak peek into the ins and outs of making your own light table .  (Well, at least our versions of them!)  There are oodles of different things you can do with a light table, but one of our favorites is to draw on it!  Sometimes we use sand and sometimes we use salt. Today, we covered our table with a layer of salt and then added a package of dry Kool-Aid to give the salt a slight tint and a wonderful smell! The children spent quite a bit of time throughout the day, drawing and writing.  Sometimes they would use their fingers or hands, and sometimes they used other tools like plastic butter knives or wooden dowels. I love how the light adds optical aesthetics to this tactile activity.  Even some of our younger friends found this activity to be intriguing.  Have you tried sand or salt on your light table? 

There has been a lot of buzz about light tables over at Teach Preschool on Facebook . Deborah has collected some great ideas for light table play and has been experimenting with making her own table over on the Teach Preschool blog.   I thought I would share with you our two light tables and how we made them. This first table is one that we put together with some scrap wood pieces, an old plexi-glass door from an entertainment center, and a couple of aquarium lights. Total Cost = $0. (We had everything on hand.)  The table needs a little bit of tweaking. (It is on my to do list).  Basically, we made a frame of wood around the plexi-glass and placed the lights under it. Our DIY skills in putting this together were far from expert, so the frame has a couple of gaps (and the reused wood is warped). We plan to try a new frame and use some caulk to seal any gaps.  We also plan to attach the lights to the side of the frame instead of just placing them on the f...