What you need:
- Lamp
- Cardboard
- Sellotape
- Pencil
- Scissors
- Skewers
- White wall
How to:
- Choose what type of puppets you want. How about your favourite
animal? Or your friends and family? Or a scary ghost?
- Draw outlines for your puppets on the cardboard and cut them
out.
- Use sellotape to attach a skewer to the back of each of your
puppets.
- Put the lamp on the floor or on a table. Point it at the wall
and turn it on. Turn off other lights and close the curtains.
- Hold your puppets between the light and the wall. Can you see a
shadow on the wall? Move the puppets between the light and the wall
to make the shadow different sizes.
 andre musta_411x308.jpg)
Pink panther shadow puppets (c)
andres
musta
Now you have your own puppets, you can make your own play!
You can use your hands as puppets too, just like this
picture.

What's happening?
Light travels as a wave. When you put your shadow puppet in
between the lamp and the wall, the puppet blocks some of the light
waves.
The closer you put your shadow puppet to the lamp, the more
light waves are blocked. This makes a bigger shadow. Moving the
shadow puppet away from the lamp makes a smaller shadow as fewer
light waves are blocked.
Did you know? A lunar
eclipse is the Earth casting a shadow on the moon!
Main image of shadow puppets (c) DogFromSPACE