Children aged three to five in the pre-school at Maple Tree Lower School at Sandy, Bedfordshire, can now enjoy playing with 64 snaking lights on the wall and interact with pupils aged five to nine in the adjoining playground through portholes in a fence.
A team from the Science Museum, which developed the project, established through a series of tests that lights were most popular with the children and could be harnessed to complement their group and individual interest in working out problems, counting and basic maths.
Most of the lights are on the pre-school side on two hexagonal platforms.
By pushing the buttons children can block, split, squash and release the lights.
A spokesman for the Science Museum said, 'The light installation hit the criteria and was an excellent way of making a barrier to separate the two sets of children - but also encouraged them to interact through the lights and portholes.'
The installation, which was developed in conjunction with Bedfordshire County Council and the Department for Education and Skills, is part of the 13m Classroom of the Future pilot scheme and involves older children at two other schools in the county. All three projects were due to be officially opened by school standards minister David Miliband this week (12 June).
Elsa Davies, director of the National Playing Fields Association, welcomed the use of technology to stimulate play and learning and said that as a former head teacher she would have been happy to participate in such an initiative.
But she stressed that these projects 'should add to the curriculum and not detract from traditional playground games and activities that stretch youngsters both physically and also in terms of their social development, through things like risk-taking and learning to be leaders'.