explain shadows and the sun and create basic worksheets including predictions

I would love to help you put together a fun, engaging lesson and worksheet about shadows and the Sun! Before we dive into the science, who will be using these materials? Knowing their age group or general science level will help me tailor the explanations and activities perfectly for them.

It's for early elementary kids (around 5-7 years old)

That age is such a magical time for science because kids are naturally so observant! Let's build a learning journey that starts with the very basics of what a shadow is, before we move on to tracking how they change with the Sun.

Your path

Tracking Shadows and the Sun

Worksheet: Predictions and Observations

How Shadows Are Made

To understand shadows, the first thing to know is that light is a bit of a speedster, but it has one strict rule: light always travels in straight lines. Because light only travels straight ahead, it cannot bend or curve around things in its path. If you turn on a flashlight in a dark room, that shoots straight out like an arrow.

Continue to what happens when light hits an opaque object

Now, let's look at what happens when that speedy, straight-traveling light runs directly into an obstacle. Some objects are . This is a fancy science word which means they are solid enough that light cannot pass through them at all.

opaque

adjective

Not able to be seen through; not letting light pass through.

Because light cannot pass through an opaque object, and it cannot curve around it, a dark space is created directly behind the object where the light couldn't reach. That dark space is what we call a shadow! To make this really concrete for a 5-to-7-year-old, you can use a simple example they can see right in front of them: a hand puppet. If you hold your hand in front of a bright flashlight, your solid hand blocks the straight beams of light. Your hand is opaque! The light hits your hand and stops, leaving a hand-shaped dark space on the wall behind it.

Continue to tracking shadows and the Sun

Tracking Shadows and the Sun

Now that we know how shadows are made, let's step outside into the sunshine! Just like a flashlight in a dark room, the acts as a giant light bulb in our sky, shining down on everything below. But unlike a flashlight held perfectly still, the Sun's position in the sky appears to change from morning to evening. Because the source of light is moving across the sky, our shadows do some pretty amazing tricks—they move and stretch throughout the day!

A stylized sun icon sits directly overhead at the top of a semi-circular path, casting a short, symmetrical pool of shadow beneath a minimalist tree.

To help your young scientists visualize this, we are going to look at how the height of the Sun in the sky changes the length of the shadow. Think of it like a giant game of giant-and-dwarf: when the light source is low, the shadow stretches out like a giant; when the light source is high, the shadow shrinks down small!

Continue to long shadows in the morning and evening

Let's explore how shadows behave when the day first starts and when it begins to wind down. In the early morning, just as you are waking up, and in the late evening, right before dinner, the Sun sits . It is not directly above us; instead, it is peeking at us from low in the sky, shining its light sideways across the ground.

Because the Sun's light is hitting us from such a low, slanted angle, it creates very long, stretched-out shadows. If you walk outside at 8:00 AM, you might look down and notice your shadow looks like a giant, reaching far across the grass! The same thing happens as the Sun goes down in the evening, stretching your shadow out into a long, sleepy shape. To help your young students remember this, you can have them act it out! Have them stretch their arms out as wide and long as they can to mimic those long morning and evening shadows.