Posted for the Resource Room group.
Activity: Sundial

Did you know that we have some children who can tell time outside? All you need is rocks, sticks and a beautiful sunny day. 

The discussion started when we shared about how ancient societies used sundials. This discussion with the children sparked their interests, so we took children for a walk to gather the materials. They collected rocks and sticks to use for our project. 

All of the sundials might have different shapes and sizes but they are all displaying the same time. The children wondered how does the sundials worked, why the size of the sundial doesn’t matter and why there were twelve stones around the circle.

We explained that sundials are a device that tells the time of the day by the apparent position of the sun in the sky and the shadows that were created. We did predictions of time to encourage our young scientists. They wondered why the shadow at noon is the shortest and why it doesn’t matter to put the stick in the middle or edge of the circle.

We explained it is because when the sun appears to move across the sky, the shadow aligns with different hour-lines which are marked on the stone circle to indicate the time of the day.

Don’t be surprised if you see a circle of rocks in your back yards. It is the sundial.

Authors: Ms. Amna & Ms. Cari