Changes Over Time - The Sun

Step 1: Read "Hot and Bright: A Book About the Sun" by Dana Meachen Rau (or other grade appropriate text about the sun).

Step 2: Shine a flashlight on a globe and turn it, explaining that the flashlight is like the sun giving light and heat to the earth. Spin the globe and show how the sun can only shine on part of the earth at a time and the light doesn't move but the earth does.

Step 3: Place an object between the flashlight and the globe. Ask the students what is made. A shadow is made when an object blocks the rays of light coming from the sun.

Step 4: Tell the students that they are going to track the sun by using a shadow, since it is dangerous for us to look at the sun without protection for our eyes.

Step 5: Help each student make a simple sundial by taking a paper plate and attaching a pencil (with a tack through the eraser) to the center. Randomly select a student sundial to complete step 6.

Step 6: On a sunny day place a sundial outside on a flat surface and make sure that it won't be disturbed. Have a student take a picture of it with a flip camera every hour (or half hour), then mark on the plate the shadow on the plate. The shadow of the pencil will slowly move around the plate.

Step 7: Early in the morning tell the students that they are going to also keep track of the sun, by taking pictures of shadows found on the playground. Give pairs of students a flip video camera and ask them to take a picture of a shadow they find on the playground. Have each group return to the same place and take more pictures several times throughout the day.

Step 8: The teacher will take the pictures that each group took, along with the sundial pictures and will compile them into a slide show to illustrate the movement of the sun over the course of a day.