Torch Sparkler Light Painting

Captain A will help you learn: Uses a phone camera on a long exposure to capture torch trails that look like sparkler writing and firework bursts, without any flames. Children learn how a camera sensor keeps collecting light while the shutter is open, and how coloured filters change the colour of light.
⚠️ Work in a dark room with the floor cleared of trip hazards, or in a garden with an adult present. Never shine torches into anyone's eyes. Keep any small torch batteries away from younger children. This is a flame-free alternative; real sparklers should only ever be handled with close adult supervision and gloves.
Steps
- Ask an adult to set the phone to night mode or open a long-exposure camera app.
- Stretch a square of coloured cellophane over the end of a torch and hold it on with an elastic band.
🔒
8 more steps with Premium
Unlock this project and every other Premium project — with the step-by-step pictures and the narrated play-through.
You might also like

Glowing Tissue-Flame Bonfire
Builds a pretend bonfire from cardboard-tube logs and tissue-paper flames that glows with a battery tea light. Along the way children learn that a real fire needs fuel, heat and air, and the Bonfire Night safety rules: grown-ups light fires, and everyone else stays well back.

Tube-Stamp Firework Prints
Turns old cardboard tubes into fringed stamps that print bursting fireworks on black paper. Children discover radial patterns that spread out from a centre, and see how bright colours stand out best against a dark background, just like real fireworks in the night sky.

Crackly Bonfire Toffee Apples
Makes the traditional Bonfire Night treat of apples coated in shiny red toffee. Children see how heating sugar and water boils the water away until the sugar reaches the 'hard crack' stage and sets into a glassy solid, and practise reading a thermometer.