Sunrise, Sunset

I was out walking in the yard this afternoon, on a clear and surprisingly warm November day for us here in upstate New York. The sun was bright, but its low angle made me think it must be closer to 4 in the afternoon, not 1 o'clock as is actually was. We here in the northeast know that the loss of daylight hours begins on the first day of fall and marches steadily until the winter solstice on December 21. By then, darkness will fall at about 4 p.m. and our nights are ever so long.

My walk and the fading sunlight made me think again about the change of seasons and how much we are affected by them. Before living upstate, my husband and I lived in New Jersey - about four hours to the south. Even that distance was enough to allow us to notice differences in sunrise and sunset.

The reason we have seasons is, of course, because the Earth takes a yearly trip around the sun and because it has a tipped axis. Those reasons taken together account for the seasons and the changes we see. To make that point with my classes, I would designate a student to stand in the middle of the classroom and be the sun. I would be the Earth, and would take a slightly wobbly trip around Mr. or Ms. Sun - being sure to tip on MY axis as I went. This is a somewhat dizzying way to show kids that the tilt of the Earth remains in the same direction - I was always tipped to the right, but my position, in relation to the sun was what changed. When my head was tipped toward the sun it was summer in the northern hemisphere (my head!). Without changing my tilt, I would circle around so that the class could easily see that while MY tilt hadn't changes, my head was now tipping AWAY from the sun, thus the season of winter. I would continue to circle, the kids naming the seasons as I went. This can also be accomplished with a flashlight and a globe, but somehow seeing me take that tippy journey really brought the point home to my students. Some excellent explanations about the seasons can be found at these sites:

The Four Seasons

The Seasons

Seasons of the Year

The First Day of Autumn

Any discussion of the seasons will lead to one about the length of day and night. At first students want to think that the number of hours in a day change - from 24 to longer or shorter amounts. Be sure to stress that when we say "shorter days" we mean a shorter number of daylight hours - the total is always 24!

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