Our Spinning Earth

My first grade scientists really hit the ground running this year as we leaped into our science unit on our Spinning Earth. We started out with a guiding question that helped us to facilitate discussion and predictions about why it can be daytime in one place on Earth, and night time in another place. We went outside and did some sky observations, watched a few videos of Earth from space, and even did a webcam investigation from four different places around the world. Our culminating activity was a sky mural that we created based on our observations as a class.

When we went outside for our observations we noticed what the sky looked like, and the sun placement. It worked out perfectly because one day of our observation was very overcast, and another day was bright and sunny. This allowed us to talk about why this is the case, and how it is still daytime even though we may not see the sun perfectly in the sky.

Then we moved into my favorite part of the unit, the webcam investigation. We took a few virtual field trips around the world to places like Italy, New York City and more to determine if it was daytime or night time. We realized that as the Earth rotates, the sun is shining light on that part of the Earth so that it experiences daytime, and when the sun is not shining on a part of the Earth, it is night time. The webcams really helped us to understand that concept.

Finally we went outside and just observed our own piece of the sky along with our group. Our group then was responsible for replicating this area on our mural. We worked on our objects for several days and then put it all together with our classmates to one big sky mural.

The unit is sadly coming to an end. We have seasons to talk about now and relate it to all that we learned about our Earth and the patterns that we experience in daytime and night time and now with the seasons as well.