Shadow Experiments

We have been reading about the Sun, Moon and Stars, learning about constellations and what makes day and night. While reading a book called Sun Up, Sun Down The Story of Day and Night by Jacqui Bailey and Mathew Lilly, we read about the sun making shadows that change through out the day. I decided we'd experiment with it and get the boys to observe how the sun's position in the shy cast their shadows.

We started at 9:10 am and picked a spot on the street that I knew would have direct sunlight for most of the day. We chose blue for that time of day. Then throughout the day we chose different colors and different times.



I thought that the heat on the street was true to the color we picked at 3:15. With bare feet it was so hot I could barely stand it!

Aidan's shadows


Ciaran's shadows


Mom's shadows




We determined that the longest shadow was at 5:30 pm and the shortest was at 1:45 pm. It was great to see Aidan understand the concept once he could see the tracings drawn out on the ground. And he could see that even after a few minutes of tracing the last shadow, the shadow position moved. "The sun moved," Scott said. "Well," I whispered, 'The Earth really moved but that's a different lesson." We both agreed to not broach that subject yet.

Now to figure out how I can teach him about the shifting constellations....




Just out of the pool...