Throwback Thursday {Science}

Today I am linking up with The First Grade Parade in her series "Throwback Thursday".  I started my blog back in 2011 so I went way back to a post I originally wrote on November 1, 2011.  This is such a fun Science activity that I will miss doing now that I won't be teaching astronomy anymore!

This week we have been studying about astronomy. I think it can be a hard topic to teach. The kids always have so many questions about it, but they ask some HARD questions! My go to response if I don't know, "Great question. Let's research that!" One activity we do is a shadow activity. I pair the kids up in groups of 2 and let them decide who is the artist and who is the statue. We go outside (weather-permitting, of course) and the statue chooses a position and the artist traces their shadow using chalk. We put the time inside/beside the shadow. Then, we go back outside every hour and do the same thing, with the statue standing in the exact same position. Side note: Because of lunch, activity, CLOUDS, we only did it 3 times but you still get the same effect.

Here, you can see some examples of what our shadows looked like at 8:45, 10:00, and 11:05.

My students did such a great job understanding the time of day based on the shadow. I had a picture on the Smart Board of a boy standing with a shadow and we talked about how the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and then determined if he was facing the west, what time of day it would be! Hard topic for 4th graders, but I felt like they really got it!

This is a great activity to use if you teach about astronomy and specifically, shadows.  

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