Sunday Science/Why does the Sun move?

That was Selena’s question when she discovered that her morning shadow was not in the same place come evening. She shrilled, “Where did my shadow go?” She was waving bye to Papa as he left to go to the store, and turned around to see her shadow waving to him, well it wasn’t there.

I took her to a darker part of the house and using a flashlight showed her how her shadow changes from what one could consider morning, noon and night. I asked her why she thinks this happens? She still thought the Sun moved, ok with this experiment I can see where that would be the given answer.

As she observed her shadow on the door, I slowly moved the flashlight up and she watched as her shadow changed.

About noon time she of course had to start focusing on the flashlight.

Then we went into evening and sunset. Selena was surprised to find her shadow totally behind herself.

I then found this video on U-Tube which we watched together.

After watching this Selena proudly announced that the Earth rotates around to make a day, and also rotates around the sun to make a year. She didn’t quite understand the entire concept of the axis and that, but hey I thought she learned quite a bit.

I asked Selena if she could find one object in the house to be the sun and for her to be the earth and show me what she just learned. She chose her box, (Yes, she still has her box) to be the sun. She proudly announced I am the earth, and I move around the sun. She marched around the box. She stopped and said but I also move around while moving around the sun. She tried to rotate in a circle while she marched around the box but that proved to make her too dizzy.

I guess now we need to go buy some materials and start making a Solar system for her.