Finally: A Sunny Day!

I have been waiting for a few weeks to get a totally sunny day so we can head outside to do our shadow inquiry all day.  Today was the day...67 degrees and sunny!

We headed out about every two hours today to do a Human Sundial experiment.  Each partner group stood on the same "X" and traced their shadow at various points in the day.  We started by going out at about 8:30.

Then we measured how long our shadow was and wrote down observations.

Finally, we measured how many fists high the sun was in the sky.

When we went out again at 10:30, many of the kids were confused!  They couldn't get their shadows to match up!

By 12:30, the sun was many fists high in the sky.

Our shadows were also really short and fat!

We were predicting that at 2:30 our shadows would be even shorter, but we were surprised that they were longer--about the same size as at 10:30am.

We also noticed that we had to turn our bodies to the side to measure the sun height with our fists.  The sun was in the other part of the sky.

However, some of us couldn't make our 2:30 shadow tracings!  Aw....too close to the building.  :(

We reflected on all of our shadow tracings throughout the day, how they changed, and how the sun affected them.

We loved Shadow Inquiry Day!

Last year I took this picture of Mrs. Zoll.

What time of day do you think it is?  Why?