Glow in the dark activities for kids

Today we have the lovely Tammy from Today's Play. She shares with us some impressive and inspiring glow in the dark fun for kids. 

Hello, my name is Tammy, from Today’s Play.  I am a family home child care provider in Michigan USA.  I care for a multi-age group of six children.  I would like to thank Amy from Learning and Exploring Through Play for the opportunity to share an activity from our program. 

We recently created a black light room because, let’s be honest, who isn’t fascinated by objects glowing under black light.  We had a space under our loft that was fairly dark so we hung a black light tube fixture and then I did a little internet research to find things that would glow.  




In our sensory table, we put a water fountain, plastic neon charms, and neon cups and then filled it with tonic water which glows under black light.  



Since tonic water in liquid form glows, we decided to experiment with tonic water ice. We also hid some glow in the dark stars in the ice chunks.  We used tongs, potato mashers, and pastry cutters to break into the ice.  




We did a little more experimenting by replacing regular water with tonic water in our favorite play dough recipe.  Unfortunately, this didn’t work so we added fluorescent paint to the play dough which did make it glow slightly.  We played with the glowing play dough in our black light studio and added glow in the dark stars and other plastic items. 





















We made several sensory bottles using our empty tonic water bottles.  We filled some with tonic water and glow in the dark items and some with water and liquid laundry detergent, which also glows under black light.  We used hair gel, tonic water, fluorescent paint, and glow in the dark spiders in a calming sensory bottle.  




We used fluorescent paint to paint on hat box lids leftover from another project and hung them from the ceiling of our black light studio.  We also used the paint to paint wooden letters, spelling out each child’s name.  In addition to our large tube black light, we also put two hand held black lights in our studio and these worked great for finding our names that were placed on the wall.  
Discovering that different articles of clothing glowed, added a fun surprise and lots of giggles each day.  

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