The new year is upon us, the Winter Solstice come and gone, and though the days are getting longer, it will still be a while before we feel the full effect. With young, school aged children, we are waking in the dark and coming home near sun set. Many of our car rides are filled with discussions about why it's dark in the morning and why we are eating dinner in the dark now, but are able to sit out on the deck eating dinner in the sun during the summer.
We have gotten out the globe and held a flashlight to it many times to show how the Sun and Earth move together and it's quite a fun display, especially if you do it just after turning out the lights at bedtime. That way you also get to explain why it's night time on the other side of the world, and can even stray into the territory of the time-zone discussion, though that's still a tough one for many young children.
All of these discussions of the Sun and its movement, along with my own desire for those warm sunny days of summer reminded me of a super cool project I did in an Astronomy course in college. We were assigned to track the sun over a period of months by taking photos and then displaying the results together on a poster board (I know - high tech stuff here! ). It may sound ridiculous, but it was actually really amazing to see how the sun changes position during the year. We all know it happens, but this project really drives the point home. So since it's the beginning of the year, I've decided to do this with my five year old with the hope that we will make it the full year. At the end, I hope we'll have a full "sun cycle" and that my son will be as amazed at the results as I was!
Specifically, this is what you do:
1.) Choose a day and time when you will have a good view of the sun. Make it a time that will be convenient for your family since you will need to take each months photo at the same time of day.
2.) Find a spot to take the photo from that has "reference points". For example, we chose to take our photo at 4 pm from the back deck (south facing) so that the sun was at the tree tops. Having the sun near the trees will become out reference point over the course of the year.
3.) Mark the spot you will take the photo with electrical tape, a rock, stick or whatever you have that will remind you exactly where to stand each time (since you need to be in exactly the same spot to make this work) and yet survive the elements.
4.) Take your sun photo, print it out and mark it with the date and time. You can start your poster board display by affixing the first months photo.
5) Do it all over again next month, and the next, and the next. You never know- you might make it the whole year too!
This is a fun, easy project to do that the children can participate in (they could take the photo themselves) and that also is a hands on lesson on the sun cycle. You could also start this project for your child's birthday and do it for a full year. By their next birthday they will be able to SEE how the earth has circled the sun one whole time since their last birthday - AMAZING stuff!
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