Mirrors

With the light off, and then on

“Why is there a mirror in here?”

It was a box with mirrors inside it, and a light. They looked in with the light off.

“There's nothing in there.”

“All I can see is the mirror.”

They worked out what it might look like with the light on, and then it went on, and they looked again.

“It's like real magic!”

Afterward they were asked to draw what they had seen in the mirror with the light off.

“I can't remember.”

“Shall we go and look again?”

They went back to it.

“I can see my face.”

And that is what they drew.

Where the light came from

A child had picked the mirror up again and was moving it about. An adult brought a flashlight over and shone it at the mirror, and it came back off the mirror straight into that child's eyes, hard enough to make them squint.

“When I move the flashlight, the light moves too — see?”

The others came over.

“Have you thought about what I asked yesterday? Where the light came from?”

They pointed at the flashlight. It came from the flashlight, an adult said, and went into the mirror, and out of the mirror into their eyes.

“So where did it come from yesterday?”

“Then yesterday it came from the window.”

The light came in the window, an adult said, hit the mirror and bounced straight out again, and that is called reflection.

They wanted more of it, so an adult fetched a box from another room with a mirror and a robot in it, where a flashlight aimed at the robot throws its shadow to the other side.

“That's reflection too.”

An adult asked one of them what the robot had done when the light hit it.

“The robot was in the mirror.”

The family in the round mirror

There was a mirror shaped like a tube, and cards with the faces of family members on them.

They guessed at the cards first — who is this one? Then they held the cards up to the round mirror and compared the face on the card with the face in the mirror.

They named the ones they knew. Then they got their own face into it, and pulled faces at it, and went back and forth between the round mirror and a flat one.

Round and round in the dress

A child was going through the dresses and the wedding things and said they wanted one on. An adult put it on for them.

They went to the mirror and looked at themselves in it, several times over. Then they took hold of the skirt and turned round and round, laughing.

After that the others picked out dresses too, and they started walking an aisle, hand in hand, swapping who walked with who.

There was a wedding car, and they got in and sat down and waved out of the window.

They kept going back and doing the aisle and the car again.

The mirror they made

They decorated mirrors of their own, choosing markers and jewel stickers, and beads and pom-poms from the art shelf.

“This one sparkles.”

“It would look nice stuck here.”

Then they held the finished mirrors up to their faces and looked closely at their eyes and their noses and their mouths, and made faces into them — angry, sad, laughing.

“This is what I look like when I'm angry.”

“My face is different when I laugh.”

They looked into each other's mirrors and copied each other's faces.

My mask is a cat

A child cut a mask out along the edges, tore up colored paper and stuck it on.

“This part is the pattern.”

“This is the cheek.”

They put a sticker on, then wanted it somewhere else, so they peeled it off and put it back down.

Then the elastic went on, and they held it up at the mirror and made faces.

“My mask is a cat.”

And to the one next to them, about theirs:

“Its eyes are all sparkly.”

Braver eyes than before

They looked hard at their own faces in the mirror, then worked the clay — hitting it, rolling it, shaping it into eyes and a nose and a mouth.

“My face looks a bit bigger than it used to.”

“Now that I'm one of the big kids, my eyes look braver.”

They dragged a tool through the clay for the lines in their hair, and set the pupils carefully where they wanted them.

They wouldn't take it off

There was a red cape, and an adult said it was the kind Santa wears. They put it over their own shoulders, and stood at the mirror in it, moving about, and dancing.

Then they cut shapes out of felt to stick on it. The felt was hard to cut, so an adult cut the shapes and they chose which ones to stick where.

The cape was long and took up too much room, so a table was pushed aside and the cape went flat on the floor, and they walked around it putting stickers wherever they wanted.

When it was finished they put it on and looked in the mirror, and they did not take it off for the rest of the play.

Which one pressed the button?

They kept going back to the mirror to make the faces of the characters they knew, the dramatic ones most of all — the picky one, the angry one, the timid one.

Later, when someone was crying or laughing:

“Was that yellow Joy who pressed it? Or blue Sadness?”

I got taller

They looked at their own face and body in the mirror, then at a photograph of themselves from when they were small, and at one from now, and said what was different.

“I got taller.”

“My hair got longer.”

Outside, they went round the trees by the playground, comparing how big and how thick they were, looking for a small one and a big one.

“This tree is like a little brother.”

Blossom stuck on the glass

They had listened to a story about blossom popping open, and the part where it goes off like popcorn was the part they liked.

Then they worked the clay in their hands into blossom shapes and stuck them onto a mirror.

“The clay is sticky.”

“I want to put the blossom on.”

My face is two faces

The day before, they had been holding a toy up to their faces.

“Whose face is this?”

So a story about a mirror came out, and they looked at the mirror in it.

“It looks like me.”

“When I smile it comes out.”

They stood at the mirror, putting their faces close to it, changing their expressions.

Then, at what they saw:

“My face is two faces.”

A concave mirror and a convex one came out. They held their faces up to the concave one.

“It got bigger.”

And to the other one.

“It got smaller.”

They went back and forth between the two, watching their own face change.

I'm behind me as well

“It looks like two of them!”

“I'm behind me as well.”

One of them kept changing the angle of the mirror.

“If I do it like this I can see more of my face.”

Then two of them stood facing each other, each holding a mirror.

“It's like we swapped.”