Home > Book Based Activities > Sun Prints – A Foggy Foggy Forest

Sun Prints – A Foggy Foggy Forest

It’s forest week and apart from The Gruffalo our other favourite forest book is Foggy Foggy Forest by Nick Sharrat – with some of our favourite fairy tale characters including it’s a fun book that lets us guess what is going to be revealed when you turn the page to see the silhouette.

Bringing Foggy Foggy Forrest alive by creating our own foggy foggy forest pictures with solar paper

Inspired by the silhouettes I decided to try an idea with the kids that I remembered from my childhood – Sun Prints – using solar paper you can create silhouettes of objects.

Whilst out in the forest we picked a variety of different leaves from the trees trying to find interesting shapes and sizes and brought them home.

Making Sun Prints with Solar Paper and Forest Objects

Solar Paper is a very simple photograph type paper suitable for children to use – it comes in a black bag to protect it from sunlight and under indoor lights you can get it out and have a look at the paper – once under sunlight the paper changes colour and any obejects placed on the paper form a silhouette on the paper, the paper can then be set by washing in water and drying.

Foggy Foggy Forest Pictures from solar paper and forest leaves

I set up a table for T with the leaves that we had collected and explained what we were going to do with the sun paper – our pack said that under bright sunlight it would take 3 to 4 minutes to work and under duller conditions upto 10 – as it was starting to get shady in the garden we went for a full 10 minutes with the paper.

Solar Paper - Forest Week on Virtual Book Club Summer Camp

T placed the leaves on the paper and we watched what would happen – I can truthfully say that as we watched I couldn’t see any changes but after 10 minutes we removed the leaves from the paper and could see the outline. Quickly placing the papers in a bucket of water we submerged them for 2 minutes (the time given on the packet) and then put them out to dry.

Sun Prints from Natural Objects as part of the Virtual Book Club Summer Camp

The effect on the paper is wonderful – we have light blue silhouettes on the paper of the leaves forming our own Foggy Foggy Forest type pictures from Nature.

Forest fun thin header
It is week 4 of the Virtual Book Club Summer Camp and this week is Forest Fun – yesterday I shared how we go about Gruffalo Hunting in the forest bringing the book alive, The Educators’ Spin On It shared about story telling with a teddy bear’s picnic and on Tuesday Toddler Approved shared a Spray Bottle Gruffalo Number Fun Activity.

If you have missed out on the Virtual Book Club Summer Camp and would like to join in – don’t worry you still can. Sign up to our list and you will receive all of the planners to date in one go so that you can join in with us in your own time.

Author
Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.

4 Comments

  1. Exceptional write-up. I used to be looking at continuously this website and I’m empowered! Very helpful info specially the very last area 🙂 My spouse and i preserve such information considerably. I had been trying to find this kind of specific data for the period of time. Many thanks and also all the best !.

  2. Cerys I love this activity idea!! I need to finally order my sun print paper so I can try it!

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