Resource Needs: access
to the internet, a moveable model of the sun and the earth (can
be just two representational balls), digital projector, working
radiator or other heatsource, one small rubber ball per child.
Learning Objectives: Children will
understand the movements of the earth as it orbits the sun by
participating in a role play exercise and looking at various
graphical representations of the sun-earth relationship.
Prior Knowledge/Skills: It would
help if the children had some idea that the earth does not stay
still, and were aware of the rising and setting of the sun.
Key Definitions:
Orbit:
the path the earth takes as it moves around the sun.
Axis: the tilt of the earth as
it orbits the sun.
Consult the following websites to gain information about
this topic:
As a preface to their pair work, go over the definitions
and explain them to the children.
You might want to do a version of one of the following role-play
exercises.
Role Play 1:
Designate one of the children as the sun, and have all others
hold hands and move around the stationery sun. Explain that it takes an
entire year for the earth to get all the way around the sun, and that this orbital
movement is so slow, we cannot detect it as we walk around on the earth's surface.
Role Play 2:
Talk about the heat the sun gives off. Obtain a heat
source, such as a radiator or electric heater, and have two children stand different
distances from the heat. Have them explain how they feel, and urge the
other children to deduce that the distance from this heat source effects how
warm it will make them. Explain that the sun does the same thing.
It gives us both light and heat.
Ask them why they think it might be colder in the winter
than in the summer?
Role Play 3:
Have one child hold your sun-ball and stand still.
Have another tilt the earth on its axis, and walk it around the sun stopping
at the four quarter marks (beginning of each season - up to you whether you
want to expand the children's understanding into the area of soltices and equinoxes,
etc.) so you can illustrate which part of the earth is closest to the sun at
those four points.
Have them remember what it felt like when they were close
to or far away from their heat source earlier?
Draw from them the understanding that when we are having
winter, we're farthest away from the sun's warmth. And point out that
when we're far away, another part of the world is very close.
TEACHERS
