Earth and Sky - Sun Power

Focus: The sun provides warmth and light, generates wind and weather, and powers the water cycle, making it possible for life to exist on Earth.

Puppets (Benjy Bear, Polly the Girl, Rachel Raspberry, Hannah Honeybee, Terry Turtle)

Materials Checklist
Puppet Show (puppets, script, sunglasses for Benjy)
Why Day, Why Night? (orange, bamboo skewer, rubber band, flashlight, thumbtack)
Why the Seasons? (Grades 3-6) (coffee can, large Styrofoam ball, bamboo skewers, orange, thumb tack, rubber band)
Straight or Slanted? (Grades 3-6) (flashlights, pencils, paper, diagram showing direct and indirect rays of sun striking Earth)Shadows and Shapes (flashlights, white paper, small animal figurines)
Melt Down (clear plastic cups labeled 'sun' and 'shade', ice cubes, two clear measuring cups)
Shadow Play (chalk, measuring tapes or string, optional yarn)
Sun Seekers Scavenger Hunt (Sun Scavenger Hunt cards, thermometer in the sun, thermometer in the shade)
Sharing Circle (large yellow paper circle, yellow and orange strips of paper, tape)

Supplemental Reference Materials (Let's Make a Sundial, Solar Oven directions, Diagram of the Sun's Rays, Sun Seekers Scavenger Hunt Cards)

Additional Reading/Resources

ELF Notes - Template for newsletter on Sun Power (coming soon)
* * Word document ** pdf file

For Younger Children
Many of the activities in VINS's new Small Wonders book can be used in ELF, too. To find appropriate activities for children aged 3-6, click here.

Teaching Suggestions
Introduction
You might start this workshop by challenging your group to cook a snack of nachos using a variety of materials you've provided for them. Then, set up: sun tea, make a sun dial and trace our shadows first thing (you might have them predict whether the shadows will be longer, shorter or the same size, then use measuring tapes to measure and label them). It's also fun to set up sun prints using construction paper and a variety of flat objects (puzzle pieces, scissors, toys). After these are set up, go back inside for puppet show and other activities.

Why Day and Night and Seasons
Use the classroom globe and be sure to turn it counter clockwise! Skip the cantaloupe (gets too expensive). Styrofoam ball is reusable.

Position Earth at each season location around the Sun. Rotate the Earth once at each season location to show day and night. Talk about day length at each season (summer has long days and short nights). Then rotate Earth as it revolves around the sun.

Shadows and Shapes
As a rainy day option, it's really fun to show pictures of shadows and have students guess the object making them! See Swinburne, Stephen R. Guess Whose Shadow? PA: Boyds Mill, 1999.

Have kids make the longest shadow they can: what time of day would this represent? Have them make the shortest shadows: now what time of day is it?

Melt Down
Do temperature of Sun and Shade as part of this activity rather than as part of the Sun Seekers Scavenger Hunt – it works better to discuss it here.

Label cups with kids' initials as well as "sun" or "shade" to avoid confusion.

Ask students to explain where they put their sun and shade cups and why they chose these spots.

Shadow Play
For older students: in pairs have children measure the true height of each other; measure his/her shadow; figure out how much the shadow has grown or shrunk from first measurement of the day to the last.

Learning Goals

Concepts/Ideas:

• Warming and illuminating the earth from 93 million miles away, the sun provides the energy needed by all living things on the earth and the energy that generates weather and powers the water cycle.
• Because the earth is rotating on its axis, the sun's rays reach only the part of the earth that is facing the sun at any given time. This rotation causes us to experience night and day. While spinning on its axis, the earth is also traveling around the sun.
• Because the earth is a sphere, some of the sun's rays shine directly on the earth while others reach the earth at an angle. This makes it much hotter at the earth's equator than at the poles.
• The earth's axis is tilted at 23° with respect to the sun, which results in variations throughout the year in the amount of sun's energy striking a given point on the earth's surface. These variations give us seasons.
• The sun is central to our lives and all life on Earth; we could not survive without it.

Vocabulary:
rotate, revolve, orbit, equator, axis, poles, seasons, sunlight, energy (definitions)

Skills:

• Active listening to understand some of the ways that the sun affects life on Earth
• Observing how day and night result from the earth's rotation around the sun and how the orbiting of the earth around the sun and the tilt of its axis give us seasons
• Comparing and contrasting through modeling the energy of rays striking a surface directly or at an angle and relating this to variations in climate at different places on the earth
• Investigating how shadows are produced and change on the earth depending on an object's position in relation to the sun
• Observing and recording outdoor signs of the sun at work and of seasonal changes
• Discussing and sharing some of the ways the sun affects our lives and the lives of other animals and plants

Grade Expectations:
Grades PK-K (S44) Animals and plants need sunlight to survive. The sun and moon are in the sky. The sun is seen only at daytime.

Grades 1-2 (S28, S44, S48) The sun appears in different places in the sky at different times of day. Sun provides light and heat necessary to maintain the temperature of the earth. There are cyclical changes that we see through seasons that can be observed and recorded.

Grades 3-4 (S28, S44) Light from the sun maintains direction of motion until it interacts with another object. When sunlight rays are blocked, shadows occur. Sunlight can be reflected or absorbed. The earth is one of several planets that orbit the sun. Like all planets and stars, the earth is approximately spherical in shape. The rotation of the earth on its axis every 24 hours produces the night and day cycle.

Grades 5-6 (S28, S44) Light travels from the sun in straight lines. When light hits the earth or any object, it is absorbed, reflected, transmitted or some combination. The earth orbits the sun in a near circular path that takes a year to complete.

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