Human Sundials

We hadn't started our Sound & Light inquiry yet, but as I looked across the weather in the next month, there wasn't a sunny day in sight except for Friday.
We needed a sunny day for our Human Sundial experiment, so I needed to take advantage of the weather!
Several times throughout the day we headed outside and recorded information about our shadows and the position of the sun in the sky.

 We traced each other's shadows.

 We noticed where the sun was in the sky with relation to the school.

 We measured how many fists high in the sky the sun was.

 Finally, we measured the length of our shadows.

We were surprised by the changes in our shadows when we headed out two hours later!

 Then we traced and recorded our information again.

The next time we went out was around noon.  We thought it was so funny that our shadows were so short and fat!
It was so much fun to record our shadows!

Sound & Light Research

We also got lost in a lot of sound and light research this month.  We have come across a lot of science words like transparent, translucent, opaque, vibrations, and bioluminescence!

Sound & Light Videos

We have been talking about how we can change how light and sound behave by using filters, mirrors, and different sized instruments.  We have also discovered that sound and light travel in waves.
Here are some amazing videos showing light and sound.

Sound and Light Stations

We started our Light & Sound Inquiry this month.  We immersed ourselves in light and sound stations.  We had everything from flashlights to instruments to our light table.  Watch the video below to see us exploring and learning about light and sound!

Human Sundials

We needed a sunny day (all day!) to do our Human Sundial experiment.  Sunny Wisconsin days in May are hard to come by!  We finally got one and headed outside every few hours to record our shadows and observe how they change throughout the day.

We started at 8:30am by marking our positions on the ground.

Next, we outlined our shadows.

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

Finally, we measured the length of our shadows with rulers.

We knew how many rulers (how many feet) it took to measure our shadow...

...but we were supposed to measure our shadows in inches...

...we really had to work our brains to add 12 + 12 + 12 + 12 + 12 + 12 + 12...

...such focus and concentration!

When we went out two hours later at 10:30, we were amazed by the changes!  We noticed our shadows were all "slanty!"

 We were also shorter!  (This was pretty funny.)

When we went out at 12:30 we found out that our shadows had changed again...they were now even shorter and went out to the side!

The sun was so many fists high in the sky!

So far we had some pretty cool observations.

We went out at 2:30.  Our shadows looked kind of like they did at 10:30 but they were further away.

The sun was going down in the sky.

Some of us couldn't see our shadows anymore.  Poor Bennett!

We figured out that Bennett's work area was now in the school's shadow!

It was a great day of learning about Light & Sound!

Immersing Ourselves in Sound & Light

One way to get our brains thinking and observing is by immersing ourselves in real examples of sound and light.

We have already discovered things like how we can feel sound vibrations and how we can make light behave in different ways, like reflect it with mirrors or change it with colored filters.

Here are some cool videos about sound and light that we observed.

Today's new learning becomes our new schema!

Sound & Light Schema

Before we start a big inquiry, it's so interesting to think about our schema (what we think we know).  We drew our Light & Sound schema and posted it on our learning clipboards.  Here are a few examples of our schema about light and sound.
Look closely.  You can see how they already are trying to represent what light and sound would look like if we could see it.

Learning about our schema helps me focus our inquiry.  It's interesting how first grade minds work!

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?