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Make your own plastic-tub light table
Disney FamilyFun magazine
Professional artsy types use light tables for all sorts of creative tasks, but you rarely see these pricey pieces of equipment designed for home use. In yet another stroke of mom genius, Lindsey Boardman, who blogs about her kid-pleasing projects at filthwizardry.com, fashioned a kid-friendly light table to use for tracing, sand painting, and more.
To make a simple light table, invert a transparent plastic storage tub (ours is a 41-quart size) over a stay-cool fluorescent light fixture ($10 at Home Depot). For easier tracing, use painter’s tape to secure your original artwork and tracing paper. To try a very different type of art, pour a bag of colored sand (available in craft stores) onto the light table and have kids make designs with fingers, dry paintbrushes, or combs. When playtime is over, dump the sand onto a creased sheet of paper, then funnel it into a ziplock bag for storage.
Search “sand painting” on YouTube.com to show your kids inspiring examples of this quirky art form. It’s also fun to create lit-from below scenes using shapes cut from colorful plastic report covers or paper.
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