How-to: DIY Color Viewers

 

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World in 2015.

Got a kid who's in love with color? These DIY color viewers will help her see the world in a whole new light! 

These color viewers are a project that is suitable for a wide range of ages. Toddlers and preschoolers will incorporate them into their sensory play, while older kids (who do still love their sensory play, of course!) will be able to use them for a variety of scientific observations and experiments--colored shadows, color mixing, the properties of light, the properties of the eye, etc. 

 Also? They're just plain fun! 

 Here's how to make your own set of color viewers: 

  1. Gather ample cardboard to upcycle. You'll need two pieces of cardboard for each color viewer. I have a horrifying collection of used shipping boxes that I was pretty thrilled to raid for this project, but cereal or cracker boxes, moving boxes, or my most common go-to, cardboard record album covers, will also work well. 

  2. Cut cardboard to size. This size will depend on the size of the cardboard pieces that you're using; to minimize waste, I cut my cardboard to the largest size that I could--about 5.25"x8.5". Cut two pieces for every color viewer that you want to make. 

  3. Cut a window into the cardboard. Measure 1" in on all sides, and cut out to make a frame. 

  4. Cut the cellophane to size. As with my DIY 3D glasses tutorial, it's the colored cellophane that really makes this project. Measure the window that you've cut into the cardboard, then cut each piece of cellophane, one per color viewer, 1" longer than that measurement by both length and width. 

  5. Glue the cellophane to one cardboard frame. Lay one cardboard frame wrong-side-up (for instance, I put the outsides of my scuffed and labeled shipping boxes to the inside of my viewers), then run a line of hot glue along the entire perimeter of the window. Carefully center and set the cellophane down over the window, and press in place. 

  6. Glue the second cardboard frame to the first. Run another line of hot glue around the frame, then center a second cardboard frame and set it down on top of the first, right-side-up. These color viewers are sturdy enough for even toddler play, but if you've got a smaller kid who still likes to gnaw, you'll probably want to cover the outside edges of the cardboard frame with clear packing tape so that the kid's saliva doesn't soften and wear away the cardboard. 

Older kids will mostly do this, though: 

 Then she looked at her sister through it, informed her that she was green and therefore made of puke, the sister screamed in outrage and began to chase her, and I might have possibly gone inside and locked the door.

An Ode to Geomags

Note: No, there are no weekly work plans this week! Near the end of last week, I began to suspect that in my own desire to stay busy to distract myself from my grief over Pappa, I've been over-scheduling the children, as well. I mean, I certainly have less time to feel sad when there's a full day of schoolwork every day AND an hours-long field trip AND a playdate AND a class or extracurricular to drive to AND some time spent shilling for cookie orders on the way there or back.

And the children, my good sports, did actually manage to get most of their schoolwork done, even so, but I began to see them gently reacting to my over-planning in probably the best way that a child can: with play. I'd go to tell them that it was time to begin schoolwork for the day, to find one or both deeply immersed in their toys, and I'd back off. Hours later, there they'd still be, happily playing. You know that I rarely disturb a focused child, so it was certainly the most efficient and least confrontational way for them to get more time for themselves.

We're going to keep that up this week, I think. I'm still going to require the kids to do their math every day, and work on their memory work (Mandarin started again last week!), and I have a selection of odd little projects--another Nature documentary that I've been wanting them to watch, thank-you letters for Christmas presents, extension recipes from Your Kids: Cooking, homemade Valentines for an exchange next week, etc.--of which I'll ask the children to choose one and I'll choose one for them each day, and, of course, there are still plenty of extracurriculars and loads of Girl Scout cookie selling, but ideally, this project-focused week will give us a chance to rest, reset, and refocus on next week.

One of the toys that was played with the most last week was the Geomags. I think that I've written about these before, and that's because they're perennial favorites, one of the few toys that have been loved right out of the box and universally for years.

They're pricey as hell, but totally worth it for us, since they're also played with so well. Every now and then, I'll add to the kids' collection for some holiday or other--the younger kid, for instance, received the pink Geomags set one Christmas, and I think another Christmas brought them the professional set. Here's basically what we have so far:



Several weeks ago, the kids became interested in using the Geomags to build anti-gravity and "perpetual motion" machines, inspired in great part by this anti-gravity spinner and this perpetual motion machine. The younger kid worked on building a triangular prism that would sit suspended inside this cube construction--

--while the older kid actually got her anti-gravity spinner to work!

The kids are both also really interested in building pyramids--when we first got these Geomags, and for years afterwards, they'd build a simple pyramid that they could transform into a "scooter dog," and they'd make it and then play pretend games with it. I haven't seen scooter dog in a long time, but I have seen several of these lying around:

Another interesting thing that I've noticed lately is the younger kid's desire to sort the metal marbles on top of the colored panels. I'm not sure what she's exploring with this, but she does it over and over, so something fascinating must be going on with it in her brain:

For the kids' next birthdays, I'm pretty sure that I'll be giving at least one of them a new Geomag set, as I've been noticing that the kids have sometimes been using ALL of the Geomags in their constructions. Here are my top contenders:

Right now, coloring books are also on the birthday wish-lists, as right this second, finished with two brief playdates with friends (while their moms and I sorted Girl Scout cookies) and our volunteer gig, procrastinating on her math, and about to be asked to help me make dinner, the younger kid is once again sitting at the table, listening to Harriet the Spy on audiobook and coloring.

She's just as busy as she needs to be.