Studying the solar system is a favorite topic of ours around our house and we've studied the sun a few times over the past few years. The most recent time was when my 4th grader was making his way through this Fun-Schooling Science Curriculum, All About Space from The Thinking Tree.
It's only a small 2-page spread in the book, but to fill in all the information we find books and activities to read and do. I wanted to just share some of those things we used here!
Books:
There are so many fun books about the sun. I got some picture books and of course, we also used some general solar system informational books.
First we have Sun! One in a Billion By Stacy Mcanulty. This picture book presents a lot of facts and information about the sun in a fun way. Not a lot of words on each page, and the pictures are colorful and fun. I think this one is great for younger kids (preschool age), but even my 4th grader enjoyed it.
Next, I have a Let's-read-and-find-out science book called The Sun Our Nearest Star by Franklyn M. Branley. Another picture book that gives a lot of facts in not a lot of words and nice pictures.
The last book I want to share is Sun up, Sun Down by Gail Gibbons. This one is loaded with so much information as you'd expect from a Gail Gibbons book.
We used our Apologia Exploring Creation with Astronomy Textbook and accompanying notebook a few years ago and this is one of the notebook pages. Making a sun collage. This could be a fun activity on construction paper too!
Sun Activities and experiments:
We've made sundials, pizza ovens, and sun prints. Any project that involves the use of the sun is so fun. It gets the kids outside (usually), and helps them to see how important the sun is to heat our world. We've never done it in our homeschool, but I've also loved activities involving shadows and chalk drawing.
This is a favorite activity of most young boys... We've grabbed some magnifying glasses and burned holes on dry leaves. It's such a great lesson to use to help teach about not looking at the sun. We found these magnifying sheets at our local dollar store and we found those to work so well. Almost better than the little glasses.
Make sure to do it in a well-cleared area because the leaves will get hot real fast, like a sidewalk. Find some leaves and use the magnifier to focus the sun onto the leaf.
The boys really had to work to figure out how to focus the sunshine on the leaf just right.
We tried a few different kinds of magnifying lenses.
Here is a fun YouTube video that we find really interesting: All About the Sun for Kids: Astronomy and Space for Children from Free School...
I love being outside in the sunshine. I always look forward to the summer and the sunshine because where we live it's pretty rainy/cloudy most of the other seasons. In fact, we have a pretty big heat wave coming through our state this weekend so the sun is definitely still doing its job really well. I hope you can enjoy the sun wherever you are!
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well done. I love those big magnifying sheets. They'll come in useful in many ways during your homeschooling years. :)
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