Two weeks ago, I completed my first black light lesson! I went up to the school on a Sunday afternoon to black out my room. I had some black sheets to cover my windows, and that worked great. I didn't have enough, so I had to use paper. That did not work as well. I will definitely be getting more sheets to do this activity again.
I put up black butcher paper on an old chalkboard in my room. I sprayed it with 3M adhesive spray (make sure you don't get the permanent kind). It was about $18 at Office Depot, but you only need a little bit, so this can should last me a while. I lined the trays with 4 black lights. I have two black light bulbs that I put in flood light holders. I hung these at the top. I use all the these black lights at the dances, so I already had them. I created different shapes, and I printed them out on neon cardstock paper from Hobby Lobby. You can catch this when scrapbook materials go on sale for 50% off! It goes through the printer beautifully!
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| This is what the board looked like as a whole. |
I started my class like normal. We created a quick foldable over the lesson. The lesson was on Transformations: Dilations, reflections, rotations, and translations. When it came time for the lesson, I had the kids sitting with their backs to the wall move to the floor. I pushed the desks over. I turned the black lights on and the the main lights off. The kids were mesmerized! The foldable was made with neon paper, so it glowed too!
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| The O is for Original and the N is for New. |
We went through different examples over the different transformations. I also used a tri-fold board and created a coordinate plane with neon crayons. I used sticky tak to hold the shapes on the board. I used neon color pom-pom balls.
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| Great representations of enlargements and reductions. |
The students really liked this. I will definitely be using this in the future for another activity. Overall, the students acted great. I only had issue with one kid, and the other kids told him how he needed to act before I could. They didn't want to lose the lesson!
