Are you getting ready to teach your first graders about light? Get your students excited about the concepts and set the stage for a fantastic learning experience. Easily grab your students’ attention using a simple, yet powerful tool: flashlights!

Why Flashlights?

For first graders, light is a mysterious and fascinating concept. It’s something they interact with daily, but they might not always understand how light works or why it’s important. Flashlights offer a great way to demonstrate light in a hands-on and engaging way. Not only are flashlights fun, but they also provide a tactile experience which helps kids grasp abstract concepts like opaque, shadows as well as how light travels.

An Experience with Impact

It’s easy to create a teachable moment. Have your students get a book and settle down in a cozy spot around the room to read. Your job: turn off the overhead lights.

Then wait for it:

Will your students complain that it’s had to see in the dark?
Will they acknowledge that light is needed to see?
Can students brainstorm other sources of light to use: lamp, fire, cell phone, etc.

Students are learning important concepts about light firsthand as it impacts their real life with this activity. So keep the learning happening. It’s time for the flashlights.

Discover using Flashlights

Your students think this is a reading activity so keep the flashlights and science connection a secret. Wait for the right moment to pull out the secret box of flashlights to save the day.

Make sure to leave the batteries out of a few though – so that students will learn that without the energy in the batteries, the artificial light source will not work. Hmm. Another learning opportunity for your young students.

Without flashlights, students will agree that it is hard to see in the dark.

With flashlights, students learn:

The energy in batteries can make the light.
Light comes out of the flashlight in a straight line.
Students can see things better when there is light.
If they put their hand in the beam of light, they can make a shadow.
The light won’t pass through their hand or book.

Flashlights give your students the chance to see light’s behavior firsthand.

Teach the vocabulary for what they are experiencing using ready-to-go lesson resources. You can find the teaching resources here.

As a result of using a flashlight in this hands-on adventure, students will build interest for what will come next. This experience will set the foundation to make the science topic and concepts more relatable.

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Now what? Keep those flashlights handy. Your next science lesson can be an experiment using the flashlights and objects around the classroom. Your students can learn the concepts of opaque, translucent, and transparent. You’ve caught their attention so keep the learning going.