Plant Experiments cont.

The blue container has their carnivorous plants. Thin red shoots have started to sprout!

The container next to it has their flowers. I moved the pots into an old grapes punnet so it'd be easier to transfer them to the window sill each day. 🌞 They've sprouted nicely and the girls are excited to check on them each morning! 🌺🌼🌸

The small container on the right has an abundance of cress seeds. 🌿🌿🌿 There were a few seeds left in the packet but not enough worth saving, so we decided to sow them all into one small container (old hummus pot!) and see if being overcrowded made a difference to their growth. 😁

The container at the front has 4 pots (old yoghurt pots in an old mushroom punnet!) from their cress experiment (the 5th pot being in the cupboard so it gets no sunlight!). In clockwise order from the top left: no water, no air, no soil, control. The girls predicted that only the control pot would grow, so they were surprised to see the seeds in the no soil pot were sprouting! So maybe the ones in the other pots, under the soil where they can't see them, are sprouting too? But how well will they grow? More waiting to see, inshaAllah! We only planted them on Friday so this photo is only day 2 of their growth. 🌱

The overcrowded pot had some seeds pressed against the side of the container, so they could easily see those ones sprouting. InshaAllah they'll be able to see the roots growing and spreading out as the days progress, too. 😄😄

On a particularly sunny day, the girls noticed that the plants on the windowsill were bending over. Which direction were they bending and why? M said they were trying to get closer to the light (she remembered seeing it a previous year in the kitchen when we were growing green beans!) so I thought I'd teach them the word phototropism. They didn't want their plants wonky, so what could we do to make them straight? Turn them around! When we checked back on them a few hours later, they were growing straight up again. 😄

When they told Papa later that they'd seen phototropism on the windowsill, they were happy to see him both surprised and confused. 😂 Then I got them to explain to him what it meant - which he remembered learning about in secondary school. 😂😂

[EDIT:]

Day 4: All the plants in our cress experiment have sprouted! But why? 😙

clockwise from bottom left: 1, 2, 3, 4

5

1) Control - everything is as expected!
2) No water - because the soil was damp when we started, even though we've not added any more.
3) No air - because there was some air in the soil/under the lid to begin with, maybe? And every time we water them, we take off the lid and let air in... We changed to lid to clingfilm so it wasn't pushing down on the plants.
4) No soil - because the water woke up the seeds, but they've not grown properly because they've got nothing to hold them up or give them nutrients!
5) No light - because the seed doesn't need light to sprout, the plant only needs light once it's grown leaves to absorb it... And every time we open the cupboard door, they get a little bit of light... M noticed they were yellow though!

The above is what the girls came up with, with some discussion. So what do they expect to see happen next? That only the control cress will grow and the others will begin to die as more time goes on. 😏

As for the overcrowded pot, they're all growing well at the moment. It's really interesting to look through the container and see the roots spreading out and the shoots breaking through the soil!

The flowers are still growing well and the carnivorous plants are growing too but more slowly in comparison. 😁

[EDIT:]

Day 8:

The no soil pot was beginning to smell so we threw it away! Why was it so smelly? Because the plants which weren't growing were starting to rot. 😷

[EDIT:]

Day ??:

I stopped keeping track of this lol.

The overcrowded one was too overcrowded! The plants pushed the soil out and made a mess (why? brief lesson on displacement!) and we compared the size of the cress to the control... Some of them weren't growing as much because they didn't have enough water/nutrients from having to share and others had grown bigger because they had taken most of the nutrients/water. Then we threw the pot away after seeing what would happen if we stopped watering them too. 😂

The cress with no light had withered and turned yellow, so we threw that away too. The girls came to the conclusion plants turn yellow/lose their green colour when they don't have enough light.

The no water cress had started out growing better than the control! But eventually they wilted and we could see the effects of not watering them - this was a few days after we threw the pot away which had no light. M was confident this was because the soil was already damp when we sowed the seeds, because otherwise they shouldn't have been able to grow at all! We also noticed how the flowers they'd planted needed to be watered every 1-2 days or they started to wilt, whereas the cress seemed like it could go a long time without needing any extra water - so even though all plants need the same things to survive, they don't all need the same amounts of them. This led to a discussion about cacti because deserts don't have much water at all but cacti can still grow there. 🌵🌸

[image]

The no air cress was still growing well in comparison. Why? The girls suggested it was because they kept getting air whenever we watered them, so really it was getting everything just like the control was! The clingfilm lid was stopping the cress from growing taller though, which is why they were bent over. When we looked more closely, we could see that some of the plants were turning brown. Maybe this was an effect of not having enough air?

[image]

The control pot was still growing and all the cress was still alive. The only confusing thing was that there were less shoots in there to begin with, in comparison to all the other pots. Why was that? Maybe because those seeds just happened to be less hardy in the first place. There really isn't any way for us to find out except to repeat the whole experiment again and see if we get the same results. We talked about why repeating experiments, therefore, led to better results. Because if we get the same thing again and again we can treat those results as being more reliable and not inexplicable one-off results!

How Water is Transported in Plants

I bought the cheapest bouquet of white flowers from ASDA (£2!) and put them in a vase at home. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a note of the plant name for future reference. 😅

We talked about why we needed to put them in water (because plants need water to survive!) and why I added the plant food to the water (for nutrients) and why the label said the plants would only stay alive for a maximum of around 8 days (because they had no roots and weren't in soil).

So if they had no roots then how were they able to get water inside them? The water must be able to travel up the stem somehow...

We read about it in a couple of our science books and talked about how the water travels to all different plant parts/structures, i.e. from the roots into the stem and then to the leaves and flowers.

Was there a way we could see if it was true? One of the books mentioned an experiment with celery, so maybe we could do the same thing with our white flowers? There was a reason I chose white flowers to begin with! So the colour change would be more apparent. 😁

We took one of each stem and put them in 4 different glasses. In one glass we filled it with just clear water. In the other three we added red food colouring, blue food colouring, and a mixture of red and blue food colouring to give purple water. We set up the 4 glasses on the windowsill in the morning so we could keep checking on them throughout the day. I also used a whiteboard pen to mark the water level; what did they expect to see happen? The water level should go down as the water's sucked up by the plant!

So what did the girls think would happen to the flowers? What was their prediction? That we would see the flowers change into the same colour as the water in the glass. Why did we have a glass with just clear water? As the control, to make sure the flowers weren't just going to change colour anyway!

After a few hours we didn't see any change, so we decided to leave them for longer. M commented that the water hadn't really gone down at all from the starting lines either!

In the meantime, we watched this video: Ivy's Plant Shop - How does water get from the roots to leaves of a plant? The girls commented their prediction should be correct because the petals in the video changed colour!

We ended up leaving the flowers for a few days while checking on them... The water level went down a little, but the change in the flowers was really mild! I checked online for a possible reason and it turns out that the change in flowers with woody stems takes longer. 😓 But never mind, it just led to more discussions about "failures" in science leading to further experiments and how multiple experiments/repetitions mean more reliable results!

Identifying Plant Structures & Functions

We did a lesson on plant structures and functions a couple of years ago, when the twins were 4 1/2, so I thought we would repeat it now they're older (to see how much they remember/have improved!) and for Z's sake as a new lesson as she's recently turned 4. 😙

As before, we visited the Botanical Gardens. In the morning before we went, we read through the most relevant pages from the Roots, Stems, Leaves and Flowers book from the Fundamental Science Collection we have.

While at the gardens, we discussed the different kinds of plants and commented on how the same structure (e.g. the flower) could look so different on different plants. Did they all have roots and stems? Including trees? Could they find them? We stopped at a couple of points around the gardens so the girls could have a go at drawing some plants. They've not done much drawing from life so this was good practise! Z wanted to do one at first, but then she preferred just running around so I didn't force it. 😊 I modelled how to do a quick sketch first and then adding more detail afterwards.

This tree was outside, so after they identified the different structures I asked them what they thought about its trunk. Why was it twisted? Did it grow like that naturally or did someone make it grow like that? How? F said maybe they kept twisting the trunk as it grew. I'm not sure of the answer myself but that seems like it could make sense?! Maybe it's two different trees being twisted together as they grew? Even if we don't know the answer, thinking about it is still a useful exercise. 😁

We also took photos of the plants they were sketching. At home, they watched how I inserted a picture into a Word file and arranged it on the page. Then they had a go with the other photos we took. As well as inserting images, we paid special attention to cropping, resizing, moving them and using zoom to be able to see more clearly what we were doing. I printed the pictures out and they used them as reference to colour in their sketches with coloured pencils.

I was going to get them to label their drawings, but decided against it as felt it would be labouring the point... They already showed they understood by doing it verbally at the gardens, so what was the use in creating extra work as "evidence"?! 😏

On another day, we watched this video clip from the BBC: Ivy's Plant Workshop - Parts of a Plant.

The twins completed the following worksheet, with the guidance that the bottom of the flowering plant should be at the bottom of the table and the top should be at the top... They could either draw four separate diagrams or have a go at joining them to make one tall diagram spanning the table! We talked about the four structures (roots, stem, leaves, flowers) and their multiple jobs, and I wrote some keywords (mainly as spelling help!) on the whiteboard. If they needed more help, they could look in one of the Science books they have which I'd put in the book box for this half term.

When they were done, I asked them to draw and label a tree with the same four labels.

You can download the simple worksheet here.

Meanwhile, Z did the activity from our previous post, i.e. drawing a picture of a flower from scratch and me guiding her with adding labels. MashAllah the twins were able to work pretty independently so I was able to give Z enough attention!

What plants need to grow

Our Science topic for this half term is plants: looking at what they need to grow, their basic structures and functions, and their life cycles in terms of flowering, pollination, seed formation and dispersal.

We were gifted a carnivorous plants display from my parents - which I've been putting off planting over the winter as we were back and forth between Ipswich and Birmingham so wouldn't have been able to look after them well - so we finally got round to planting those! We also had a few flower seeds from my nephew's birthday party so we planted those too.

I asked the girls what they thought the plants needed to grow well - what did they already know? They said water, light and soil because they remembered our sunflower experiments in the garden from previous years. 😁🌻🌻🌻 We looked in one of their science books about plants so they could check and they remembered plants also need air - because they "breathe" in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, which is the opposite of what animals do.

I told them I was going to put their flowers and carnivorous plant display on the sideboard where they could get lots of sun because I wanted them to grow well, inshaAllah. And we needed to remember to water them often! They were already in soil and they weren't covered up so should be able to get plenty of air.

Then I asked them if we could design an experiment to test if they were right about these four factors being important for plant growth... We could use cress seeds and see what happens if we tried to grow them without those things. Could they design an experiment to see which one of those things is the most important, maybe? How could they make it a fair test?

With some  discussion, they came up with the following:

They both found the "no soil" pot hilarious for some reason. 😂😂

Z didn't really take part in the designing an experiment part, but she understood we had 4 different pots to compare how the seeds would grow without either light, water, soil or air. And the 5th pot had all four things to be the control, so to show how the plant is supposed to grow.

Once the cress has sprouted, inshaAllah, we can discuss what they'll observe and why it happened. 🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱

Acrostic Poetry

We haven't done any poetry for a while! So I checked online for a list of suggested genres and picked a few for us to look at over the next few weeks inshaAllah: acrostics, shape poems and couplets.

We started by visiting the library and looking for poetry books - not in any particular genre - just for general inspiration.

Fortunately, there were some examples of acrostics in one of the books we took out!

We read the examples together and I asked the girls what they thought an acrostic poem was... They said it has a word going vertically which is what the poem is about. 👍 Then I quickly made this up on the whiteboard to demonstrate!

As our current science topic is to do with plants, I thought it'd be nice to link our poetry to this. We talked together and wrote the following two examples:

Then I challenged the girls to write their own using a plant-related word as their theme. We talked about how poetry doesn't have to rhyme! And the meaning of what they want to say is more important. 😁 When they were finished, we used thesauruses to make their writing more interesting. Finally, they wrote their poems out in their best handwriting, illustrated them, then trimmed and mounted them onto coloured paper.

Papa was late coming home that evening, so we left this final acrostic on the whiteboard for him... The girls eagerly asked him if he saw it the next morning, but unfortunately he was too tired to notice. 😂

Switches and Everyday conductors

Week 5:

We recapped what we knew about electricity flowing around a circuit in a loop, to e.g. light a bulb, and how if the circuit is broken then the bulb won't light.

We talked about how we might want to break a circuit on purpose, because otherwise the electrical thing, e.g. bulb, would be on all the time which is both wasteful and useless for all the time you don't need it! So what can we put in our circuit to break/complete it when we need to? A switch!

Our little circuit set came with a switch, which we looked at in a little more detail. It has a 0 and a 1 on it - why? 0 to mean it's off and 1 to mean it's on (useful to know in relation to binary code too!). An easy way to remember which number means what is that 0 means no power so off.

So how does a switch work? I had the girls build a simple series circuit from scratch each, independently, containing one cell, a bulb and a switch.

Then I asked them if we could use something else as a switch instead - what could we make a switch out from? What does it need to have? Two conductors which can break apart and touch together and an insulator around them so we don't get a shock when we touch it!

What could we use as an insulator? A piece of card folded in half maybe. What about as the conductor? M said we needed something metal, so what was there in the house which was metal?

Our making a switch investigation turned into a testing for conductors instead. 😂

They used the circuit with a single bulb they had made earlier and took out the switch, then they held one free wire each and touched the ends to the object they were testing. If the bulb lit up then it meant the object was an electrical conductor!

The objects they tested were: a £2 coin, a £1 coin, a key, the spine of a ringbinder, scissors (the blades and the handle), paper, a hair clip and a hair slide.

They came to the conclusion that all the metal things were conductors and all the non-metals were not! The metal hairclip didn't conduct electricity though... Why? Maybe because it was painted pink so the paint was an insulator? When they tried with a plain metal hairclip, they saw that the bulb did light up. 👍

Cells, Batteries, Bulbs & Series circuits

Week 3:

After recapping how to build a simple circuit (which they did independently, MashaAllah), I asked them where the energy in the circuit was coming from? They answered the battery.

I told them even though we call an AA battery a battery, it's actually just a cell, i.e. one part of it. When you have more than one cell together (hold up two AA batteries) then it's called a battery. So the AA batteries we use are actually called "single-cell batteries" because they only have one cell inside them. 😎

So looking at our circuit, how many cells does it have? One. And is the bulb shining very brightly? Not really... So how do they think we could make it shine brighter? F answered straightaway to add more cells. 👍 So I asked them to work together to build a circuit with one bulb and two cells, since at the moment they had a circuit with one bulb and one cell each. After a little arguing (lol) they managed and were pleased to see the bulb light up brighter! 💡

So I asked does that mean that if I keep on adding cells, making a bigger and bigger battery, then the bulb will keep on shining brighter and brighter? Or would something else happen? At first they laughed that it would, but then M said no because if you had too much power then the bulb would catch on fire. 😂

We read the page about how bulbs work in our KS1 Electricity book and then looked at one of the bulbs closely to see if we could see the filament (it was a little difficult so was there anything we could use to make it look bigger? A magnifying glass!). It was easy to see the filament when the bulb was on though, so need for a magnifying glass there! We talked about how the filament makes both light and heat (they touched the top of the bulb whilst it was lit up and compared it to what the top of a bulb which was off felt like) and how the filament can melt/the bulb "pops" - which is why we need to change the light bulbs in our house sometimes.

So if adding more cells to a circuit would make the bulb shine brighter (to a point!) then what would happen if we added more bulbs to a circuit, but kept the number of cells the same?

I asked the girls to help me design an investigation to find out, making sure we did things scientifically so everything was fair!

As they aren't expected to learn circuit diagrams at this stage, and to avoid overwhelming and complicating things, I had them draw the circuits pictorally instead.

So their prediction was that the energy from the battery would be shared equally between the bulbs... So when we tested it and only one bulb came on they were confused! We switched the bulbs in the bulb holders around to make sure it wasn't the bulbs which were broken and that it really was just one of the bulbs lighting up, then I drew a diagram of the three bulb series circuit on the board so we could talk about what we'd seen.

I asked the girls if they thought they could explain their conclusion, using what they know about the power in a circuit. F said the first bulb had used up all the energy so there was none left for the other bulbs to light up. So I asked them if that meant all the electricity had stopped at the first bulb? First they said yes, then they thought about it and said no - because if it had stopped at the first bulb then it wouldn't have carried on to make a loop and the circuit wouldn't have worked at all! So that meant the electricity going round the circuit and the power to light up the bulbs were two different things...

They understood it in the end as the first bulb taking all the power and not sharing it, but the electricity still went all around the circuit (no intention to introduce current, voltage and resistance at this stage!).

When they were done writing, I asked them what they thought would happen if they made a circuit using two fans next to each other. Would they both work or only one or? F said only one fan would work... Which makes sense based on what they'd just seen with the bulbs!

Week 4:

After a quick discussion about the investigation we did last week, I asked them again what they thought would happen if we built the same circuit with two fans. They answered confidently that only one would work, of course! So we tested it...

Both fans came on at the same speed. 😂

Now the girls were confused! The fans must be sharing the power like they thought the bulbs would last week! Were they really? How could we test it? Take one fan away from the circuit... Yes, it came on at a faster speed than two fans together!

But why? Was there something wrong with our bulb experiment then? How could we test it? Maybe repeat it with different bulbs?

The sets I bought came with 6 bulbs all together, so we made a circuit with two cells and two bulbs and swapped them in and out of the bulb holders in turn to see what would happen... We saw three different results:

1) one bulb bright, one bulb off
2) one bulb bright, one bulb very dim
3) both bulbs dim

So what did this all mean? We decided to look at the bulbs closely and they could see some numbers and letters marked on the side of the metal - 3 bulbs had 2.5V, 2 bulbs had 3V and 1 bulb was unmarked! So what would happen if we only used bulbs of the same type in the circuit?

Of course, they behaved in the same way as the fans did and shared the power equally!

They wrote up this separate conclusion after their original one.

This was a good (unplanned and unexpected lol) lesson in checking all the variables in an experiment and a good reminder to me to swot up on the subject beforehand - I completely forgot to check the bulbs first and assumed they were all the same! So I researched why the bulbs behaved the way they did after the girls wrote their first conclusion... I didn't have the confidence at the time to challenge it. 😂😅 And it was a good lesson in the scientific method and how mistakes help us learn. 😆

Greek Mythology (2)

I spent some time debating how much detail we wanted to go into Greek mythology at this point in time... I didn't feel the girls would enjoy the violence aspect of the adventures at their current age... And Ancient Greek culture is a good topic base for Art, Geography and History lessons, so I'd rather have the time to plan a unit in enough detail to do it justice rather than do a rushed job now. 😶

With that in mind, I decided to use this week just to focus on the myths we've already covered in the form of another shadow puppet theatre (subtly revising work on light and shadows at the same time!).

The girls chose to do the story of King Midas and the Golden Touch.

Before they could do their play, first I had them rewrite the story in their own words in script format. This sounds a bit daunting for a 6 year old but MashaAllah they managed with some structured help!

After rereading the version in the book and comparing it with a version online (ideally we would go to the library but unfortunately we're without a car atm!), I had the girls tell me what they thought were the main parts to the story. We wrote these on scrap paper so we could then rearrange them into chronological order when they were done (this also helped them see if they had missed any key events out when summarising the story).

I gave the girls a storyboard template so they could translate the bullet point version into a storyboard. This was also useful in getting them to think about what might be on stage at that point during their shadow play.

Next, I had them write out the text in their storyboards on a new piece of paper but adding more detail, paragraphs and direct speech so it flowed like a story - and made them think about what their narrator and characters might say during the play. I had them do this pretty much independently as I wanted them to come up with different versions - a good lesson in how even though we might have the same thing to start with (we all read the same stories), they wrote them again in different ways. Maybe this could be why many different versions of the same story exist? Considering how many thousands of years old the stories are and how many times they must have been retold and passed down!

When they were finished, we recapped editing skills (we had done work that week on conjunctions and fronted adverbials, so they were looking out for those in particular!) and they made changes in a different colour.

(They wrote the words "everything" and "excitedly" at the end as spelling practise since they had misspelt them in their writing. Just chose one for them to do.😗)

Finally, I challenged them to work together on the laptop to turn their stories into one playscript. They needed to think about the layout themselves and talk together to agree on which wording to use! I created them a file on Google Docs for this so I could help with editing on my new laptop (gift from my husband, MashaAllah 😁) - they were amazed how we could all edit the same file at the same time! But it was really convenient so I think from now on we'll continue using Google Docs over Microsoft Word, inshaAllah.

The above was done over three consecutive days.

For their shadow puppets, we talked about how they could show the things turning into gold - how could they make the shadows change colour? I prompted them to think about layering - as we had previously layered blue and yellow cellophane to create a green shadow for grass - which materials could they layer to turn an opaque shadow into yellow?

When they were done and had practised it a few times, we recorded the show (each scene as a separate clip) and edited it on the laptop using Shotcut into one long video.

Core Subject Targets for Year 3

Literacy - Year 3

Numeracy - Year 3

Science - Year 3

Targets based on the current National Curriculum.

Introduction to Electricity & Circuits

Week 1:

We read the first 6 pages from the Electricity book in the KS1 Science series we have, which gives a nice, simple introduction to the topic.

We looked at examples around the house of electric devices and made a distinction between mains and battery powered devices.

We talked about why electricity and electric items can be dangerous and how we should never play with them or touch them with wet hands.

We talked about insulators and conductors - in the context of how is it safe for us to use electric appliances if electricity is so dangerous? Because the inside of the appliance has conductors to let the electricity flow and the appliance to work but the outside is covered with an insulator which doesn't let electricity past so it's safe to touch. We talked about which kinds of materials are electric conductors (e.g. metals, especially copper, and water) and which are insulators (plastic and some others which we'll look at in more detail later InshaAllah).

(M remembered here about our work on insulators when investigating materials to keep a mug of tea hotter for longer, so we talked about what the words actually mean and how thermal insulators and conductors might be different to electric insulators and conductors... They should just think of the word insulator as to block or trap something as a wall does, and the word conductor as to let something through it easily or help it get past - I drew some simple diagrams on the whiteboard of arrows being blocked or going through a wall to help illustrate the point.)

We talked about how electricity is generated in power stations and the different kinds - e.g. water, coal - and whether it was better to use renewable energy sources or fossil fuels and why.

Finally, we watched a few of the relevant episodes from Blaze and the Monster Machines which were on Amazon Prime at the time (e.g. Episode 28 - Darington to the Moon! - features the characters visiting different kinds of power station).

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Week 2:

We read the double page spread about circuits in the Electricity book and talked about how electricity needs to flow in a loop to make things work. I showed the girls the battery from the remote control and how the ends were labelled positive and negative, how the remote control had a positive and negative sign where the battery fits inside and how we need to make sure the positive and negative signs match when putting the battery inside. I briefly told them about how the electricity moves from the negative end to the positive end in a circuit, which is why a loop needs to be made, but literally just as an introduction to the concept rather than expecting them to remember or understand!

We bought a simple circuit components set from Amazon (similar to this one, I can't find the exact link we used!) for the girls to experiment with. I did consider the Snap Circuits set, but I couldn't justify it for the price... And actually I'm pleased we went with this instead as with all the wires and clips it feels more raw and rewarding to do. 😆

I began by demonstrating how to build a simple series circuit with a bulb, narrating what I was doing so as to introduce the component names (wire, crocodile clip, battery holder, battery, bulb holder, bulb) and discussing with the girls which parts were conductors/insulators and how the electricity could flow from one component to the next. They could see clearly the copper wire from where it was exposed at the ends and how the screws were metal where the clips attached to the holders.

When the bulb was lit up (cue delighted gasps!) we talked about how there was a complete loop and how when the loop was broken the bulb would turn off.

I took away the bulb and replaced it with the fan and motor - introducing the component names first - and we talked about how the fan was able to spin... The motor was spinning and the fan was attached to it. The electric energy had been converted into movement (kinetic) energy, as well as a little heat from friction and some sound energy too. What was the electric energy turned into in the bulb? Light and some heat!

I disconnected the motor and showed the buzzer to the girls. We'd already converted electric energy to light and to movement, so what did they think this component did? F guessed heat and M said it looked like a hairdryer. 😂 When I connected it and it made a noise they both laughed and said sound energy! Then I told them the component was named a buzzer.

Finally, I took everything apart and asked them which was their favourite - the bulb, motor or buzzer? They both said the motor and fan. I gave them the necessary components (i.e. 2 wires, battery holder with battery inside and the motor with the fan attached) and challenged them to build a circuit to make the fan spin.

MashaAllah they managed and they really enjoyed it too! They could have played for longer tbh but it was dinner time so everything had to be put away. 😋

Later that week, we watched the film Monsters Inc. together and talked about how they got their energy not from electricity but from screams. 😁😁

Light & Dark - Drawing Shadows

Target: Look for and measure shadows, find out how they are formed and what might cause the shadow to change.

We went on a shadow hunt around the house to see where there were shadows and why - what was blocking the light? Where was the light source?

On a piece of A4 white paper, I placed a toy animal on it and we used a lamp to create its shadow. I drew around the shadow (narrating what I was doing, including how difficult it was to not knock over the toy, or to see exactly where the shadow was when my hand's shadow got in the way, and look, I made a mistake here but never mind! - F, in particular, is still working on her growth mindset when it comes to difficult things and getting things wrong...) and coloured it in lightly with a coloured pencil. Then I repeated this process with different figurines and colours, overlaying shadows on purpose, to create this abstract artwork - revising earlier work on colours and blending.

They experimented with where they wanted to place the toy in relation to the light and saw how the shadow changed size or stretched. To make things fair, they kept switching seats so they could take turns being nearer or further away from the light source.

I wasn't expecting Z to write the title on hers, but she did while I wasn't looking and was very pleased with herself!

When they were done, they used their drawings to play a quick game of "guess the animal" with each other. 😄

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We discussed how to make a simple sun dial, recapping their knowledge on space and how the Earth rotates to create day and night. The book on Light and Dark in the KS1 Science series we have has a few pages on the subject which we read through together.

Before we made our sun dial, we recreated the theory behind how a sun dial works using a lamp to show how the shadow changes in quick time, moving across the ground, as the sun "moves across the sky". I had them predict what they thought the shadows would look like in the morning and evening and what time they thought it would be when the shadows are at their shortest (they correctly guessed stretched out and around midday!)

We tried making our own using paper plates with a pencil blu-tacked in the centre, but the weather this time of year was too overcast to see the shadows clearly. We might try again in the summer InshaAllah, but on a positive it was a good discussion point on whether sun dials were effective all year round or in all weathers!

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We drew some simple 3D shapes and learnt about shading to create a 3D effect. We started with a sphere, then a cone and finally a cube. We talked about where the shadow would be in relation to the light source in the picture. We also tried doodling other pictures, e.g. a tree, and I showed the girls how to draw simple prisms (recapping that a prism has the same 2D shape at each end!).

I bought some 3B pencils for this purpose and the girls discussed how the lead felt softer than their HB writing pencils and why it was easier to draw with the 3B pencil. They experimented with using different pressures to create lighter and darker effects.

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Finally, we watched The Gruffalo's Child (which happened to be on Amazon Prime) and talked about why the shadow was so large even though the mouse was so small! To help reinforce the point, we took out the torches again and played around with making shadows on the wall. 😁