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. 😁

The Moon

We recapped moon phases, first with a quick oral quiz, then checking by reading the book Hello Mr Moon (can't recommend this book enough!).

So why does the moon look different as the month goes on? Because its always there, but we can only see the parts reflecting the sun... Which changes as the moon orbits the Earth! (I had the ambition to make a model of this using ping pong balls and colouring them in, but you know, lack of time with a baby! Alhamdulillah the girls are bright and seemed to get the concept without one, just from books, YouTube vids and our visit to the National Space Centre!)

So we wrote up this prediction together:

And decided to try and keep a moon diary to test if it was true!

I thought now would be a good time of year to do this activity, since the sun sets earlier, the nights are longer, and there would be more opportunity to see the moon - right? Turns out not really, because the nights were so cold they were often too foggy to see anything. And the moon spends most of the early part of the night behind the houses across the street, so they would have had to stay up until past 8pm to see it anyway. 😖 Never mind though! So we started out our diaries, but after the first week had 5 days of "too cloudy", we decided to just keep an eye on the moon whenever we could - with the expectation it would be a new moon again in line with the new Islamic month and full again a month from when we started our investigation... Which, of course, it was! 🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕

Stars, Asteroids, Comets & Meteoroids

Some highlights from our Space unit:

What is the sun? What are stars made from?

We read through a variety of non-fiction books from the library to research the answers to these questions... The sun is the star around which the planets of our solar system orbit. F cleverly commented from this, "Does that mean that if there were planets going around other stars, they would be like the sun for those planets?" 😍👍

Stars are made from lots and lots of tiny pieces of dust and gas hitting against each other, and every time they do they create heat and light (a nuclear reaction!). 💥 I needed to briefly explain what I meant by a "gas" (it's like air; it's all around us and we breathe it in and out... like when we boil water and you see the steam coming up, that's the water changing into a gas... They seemed to grasp the basics but changes of state is now a topic I want to cover soon with them, insha'Allah!) but they seemed to get the idea of it.

To help demonstrate, I took out a box of matches (quick recap on fire safety with them). When I hit the match head against the box, it made fire: heat and light. A similar thing is happening inside a star, except lots and lots of tiny reactions are happening all at the same time. (The girls then had fun taking it in turns to blow out the matches I struck 😂)

Stars grow old and die when all the nuclear reactions are finished - similar to the matches, once it's been used, can it be used again? No! (We tried one to make sure!) So one day the sun will burn out, too... When? Scientists have predicted it to happen a long long long time after our lifetimes (billions of years from now!). The book we were reading explained what would happen to the Earth if there was no more sun - everything would die because it would be too cold - so I asked the girls if they wanted to be alive to see that happen... One said yes, the other said no! Then the conversation moved to talking about the Day of Judgement, because maybe that would happen before the sun burnt out anyway; only Allah knows.

What's the difference between an asteroid and a comet? What is a meteor?

We read through this brilliant find from the library: Our Solar System - Asteroids, Comets and Meteors to learn about these smaller objects found in space. After reading it together, taking it in turns to read paragraphs, captions and fact boxes, I wrote the keywords on the whiteboard: asteroids, comets, meteors, meteoroids, meteorite. Then I asked the girls to tell me what each one meant, i.e. give a definition. If they couldn't remember exactly, what could they do? M said to look in the glossary. 👌 And if they wanted even more detail? She said they could just go back and read the pages in the book again!

So the definitions we came up with were:

asteroid: made from rock and metal; orbits the sun
comet: made from rock, dust and ice; orbits the sun
meteoroid: piece of asteroid or comet
meteor: the streak of light made by a meteoroid burning up in the Earth's atmosphere
meteorite: a meteoroid when it hits the Earth

I learnt something new, too, as I didn't know the difference between any of them! Then I made a simple diagram of this information for them to fill in the blanks as a worksheet.

You can download our worksheet here.

The purpose of this exercise was to highlight how useful diagrams can be as opposed to blocks of text, rather than getting them to memorise the definitions for asteroid/comet/meteoroid/etc.

Why are diagrams useful? Because pictures can help us understand things quicker and/or easier! Which kind of fact book would they prefer to read: one with diagrams or one without? Why? Then I asked them to find me an example of an effective diagram (one which they liked because it was clear and helped them to understand something easily) from one of the non-fiction books we had taken out from the library.

Finally, we followed the instructions in the back of the book to make our own comets from foil and ribbon. Z made one too, with my help. After they threw them around a bit, I got them to climb onto the sofa (climb into space!) and throw their comets down to try and hit a cushion on the floor. Whenever they got a hit, we all cheered, "You made a crater!" - to reinforce that the impact from a meteoroid hitting the Earth makes a big dent in the ground. 😁

Later on, I found them throwing their comets down the stairs. 😂

Charlie & The Chocolate Factory/Great Glass Elevator

Linking together our Literacy unit on Plays with our Science unit on Space:

We watched both the 1971 version and the 2005 version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (since we still have our free Amazon Prime trial!) for the girls to compare and contrast similarities and differences between the two interpretations, and practise their new play-related vocabulary such as scene, actor/actress, costume, prop, etc.

They preferred the older version because they liked the songs better! But the chocolate looked tastier in the newer version. 😋

Now they knew the storyline of the first book, this meant I could skip straight to reading them Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator - which is partly set in space. 😁 And expose them to some rich new vocabulary and sentence structures they couldn't otherwise access independently, courtesy of Roald Dahl. 👌

When we start our unit on Poetry, insha'Allah, I'll probably revisit the book version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory then, since the Oompa Loompas have some nice rhymes which are worth looking at in more detail... We'll see!

Space Art

Mixed Media: Wax resist paintings

To begin our topic on Space, we created a space picture to summarise what we wanted to learn about. First, we brainstormed on the whiteboard all the different aspects of Space they were interested in:
     - planets
     - moons
     - the sun
     - stars
     - asteroids, meteors, comets
     - astronauts
     - rockets
     - satellites
     - aliens!

Then I gave the girls and myself (to model!) a piece of plain white card each and some wax crayons so they could draw some of the things we had come up with.

We had recently been to the library so had taken out a variety of both fiction and non-fiction books on the topic, which we had been reading through for a few days prior, so the girls had the idea to browse through some for inspiration by looking at the illustrations and front covers. I also put this YouTube video on the TV for background noise/images to set the mood. 😊

So we drew colourful patterned planets and moons with wax crayons, a bright sun... One wanted to draw a rocket, so I showed her how by drawing one on my paper... We used a white crayon to draw dots as stars all over...

When we were done, I diluted some black, red, green and blue paints into a pallette for them to mix as they liked then paint over the top of their drawings. I think you're supposed to use watercolours, but we didn't have any at the time so diluted poster paint had to do! The wax crayons worked to resist the paint a little, but not enough to make the paint just run off... So once the pictures had dried a little, we used kitchen towel to gently rub over the paper: the paint on top of their wax drawings came clean off whilst the paint on the paper itself wasn't affected.

Once the pictures had dried completely, we used glitter gel pens to add extra details. Then I hung them up (including the toddler's painting!) in the corner of the room using string and mini wooden pegs.

Paper Mache Planets

We decided to make some 3D models of planets to hang in the other corner of the room (what shape should they be? spheres!) - so I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce the girls to paper mache. 😁

We didn't have newspaper to hand and, according to the internet, it was possible to do paper mache with toilet paper... Not something I'd tried before, so why not try now together with the girls??

So I blew up 3 balloons, tore a load of toilet paper into separate sheets, mixed some PVA glue with water and gave the girls a paintbrush and balloon each. I showed them how to do the first sheet, i.e. lay it flat onto the balloon and paint over the top with the glue mixture, and explained they needed to cover the whole balloon in the same way. It was a little tricky keeping the balloon from rolling everywhere, but the twins soon got the hang of it! I needed to help the toddler a lot more with hers.

When they were done, I hung the balloons from the knotted end with a safety pin onto a piece of strung in the corner of the ceiling.

They were dry after 24 hours, so we took them down to decorate... It was this point where the instructions online (and my memory!) were a little unclear - were we supposed to pop the balloon or not? After some discussion, we decided to pop the balloons and the girls were pleased to see their paper structures didn't collapse too.

The next part was to paint their planets, but of course paint is wet... And when the toilet paper structures became wet, they went soft again! In hindsight, I really should have known better! (Gonna blame baby brain here 😅) But it was too late now. So I was really proud of the girls for not getting upset, but instead asking if we could try again but this time not pop the balloons before painting. 😍 We'd been working on growth mindsets (not giving up in the face of difficulties or upon making mistakes) for the past week or so, and this really seemed to have paid off. 💪

So we started again from scratch, but with smaller balloons this time because it took longer than they wanted last time, and after they were dried we got to painting them with the balloons still intact inside.

I poured the primary colours as well as black and white into a paint pallette each for each girl and let them paint their planet however they wished. It was a little difficult keeping the balloons still, so we balanced the balloons inside a plastic cup as they painted.

When they were finished, I hung their planets up again using the safety pins and string.

The next week, we were invited to a birthday party and were given some wooden stars to decorate inside the party bags to take home - so we hung these stars in between their planets. M said she liked the room with their planets and stars on one side and their space paintings on the other because it felt like they were actually in space - maybe on a space station, because that was like a house in space for astronauts to live on and we were in our house in space. 😂👍

The National Space Centre

We visited The National Space Centre in Leicester as part of our topic on the seasons. Since Leicester is relatively near to Birmingham, we ended up purchasing a year pass as going at least twice means any additional visits work out as being "free". So with the view of visiting again later, we focused just on the exhibits relevant to our topic or the solar system in general.

Some of the things we saw, amongst many others:

A mechanical representation of the Earth orbiting the sun and the moon orbiting the Earth.

A rotating model to show the reason we have day and night.

Part of the Solar System gallery, with each planet having its own themed section to walk through and explore.

The actual Mars Rover scheduled to be sent to Mars, insha'Allah!

Overall, the trip was a really good experience for the girls in consolidating their knowledge and opening up opportunities for more questions. 👍