Over the last year or so, light tables have been a big deal in the momma blogger / homeschool scene.  It’s funny because we’ve been playing with light a very long time, although certainly not with a fancy, big table. I have a very old LightTracer box picked up years and years ago for tracing images for scrapping. It is not as versatile as the ones I have seen out there in blogland. I wouldn’t want to bring in anything wet or messy on it.   We’ve played with see through pony beads and petri dishes, translucent geo tiles, layering tissue paper,  and those multi colored flat vase filler marbles.  As overhead projectors become a thing of the past due to document cameras and smart boards, etc, I keep an eye on the clearance section of educational supply web sites. I’ve picked up a bunch of accessories designed for the overhead for rock bottom prices — dominos, word tiles, base 10 pieces, and so on.
Today Little LE was making sentences with a word tiles. At 46 months she is recognizing about 2 dozen words (family names, some basic sight words, and some CVC words like cat, sun, etc), but most of the words were unfamiliar. She’d put together a “sentence” and then have me read it and laugh at its silliness.
