Kickin' it old school

Over the weekend I had the good fortune of coming across this magnificent thing in my grandmother's basement, it's a tiny slide viewer with about 50 slides. My grandmother must have picked it up on one of her many adventures. It has a collection of slides with castles labeled "1st visit" and "3rd visit". I imagine theres a second visit floating around somewhere in the boxes and boxes of photos - I was pretty thrilled to get it. The castle slides are obviously taken by a professional, probably sold in mass quantity at some little souvenir shop. I thought the kids might enjoy looking at the images of real castles inside the viewfinder.

C - "Where are all the princesses? Maybe they're all sleeping." 

The kids asked where I got the slide viewer from so I told them it was my grandmother's and that she probably went to see some of the castles in the slides because that's just the sort of thing she enjoyed doing. They thought it was pretty cool that I have a grandma who goes to visit castles.

While waiting for a turn with the slide viewer the other children took turns looking at slides on the light table with magnifying glasses.

As we were going through the slides I was pleasantly surprised to discover that one of the boxes of slides contained vacation slides from a canoe trip to the mountains. There in the collection, was a picture of my grandmother just hanging out right smack dab in the center of the frame. The kids all hurried over to see what the woman who traveled to all these castles and mountains looks like.

J- "It's kinda like a movie camera!" A - "Wow! I can see the mountains in there."


I was hoping we would use the slides to spin tales of castles and mountain adventures but the kids were so enamered with the process of loading and unloading the slides then marveling at the brilliant colors on the tiny images that we spent all of our time making sure each child had as long of a turn as s/he wanted. After all it isn't every day that we come across something this cool!

"Look  inside of here Ms. Geraldine! It SO beautiful! If I lived inside of this castle I would have a lotta gold."

As they worked I noticed some of the children looking in the crack where the slides go in as if they were trying to figure out how it all worked. We took the lid off of the projector and took a peek inside. The innards were very simple - the standard battery mechanical pieces, a tiny flashlight and a magnifying glass attached to the inside of the housing. I showed them how the slides pushed a tiny lever that turned the flashlight on so we could see the image through the magnifying glass. 

After looking at some of the slides A and J decided to draw some pictures of mountains while they waited for a second turn with the machine.

Simple machines are so much fun to explore!

C- "Look Ms. Geraldine! This is COOL! I can see a castle."