The story The Lights that Dance in the Night by Yuval Zommer is a wonderful way to explore and learn about the Northern Lights that appear during the winter season. The book goes on a journey from space to earth showcasing the magic for animals and people living in the frozen lands.
Before or after reading the story you can open the discussion even more about the Northern Lights. The Northern Lights are also known as Auroral displays appear in many colors, forms in patches or scattered clouds of shooting rays that light up the sky with an eerie glow. The bright lights are collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun that enter the earth's atmosphere and are seen above magnets poles of the northern and southern hemisphere.
After reading the story you can invite the children to recreate scenes from the story with Glow Construction Blocks to be ice or the northern lights, bottle brush trees, wooden peg people, and arctic animals figurines.
As they play with the open ended materials so much literacy comprehension/language will be developed, spatial awareness through building, color recognition exploring the light from the blocks, imagination blossoms as they act out with the figurines, and the freedom to be creative in their play.
Another book we love by this author ioThe Tree That’s Meant to Be Nature Loose Parts Play.