IS OUR SHADOW ALWAYS THE SAME THROUGHOUT THE DAY? TEACHING DIURNAL ASTRONOMY IN KINDERGARTEN

Nowadays perception towards science education has changed substantially, once having understood that its teaching should be carried out at classroom by using an inquiry approach and from early ages. For this purpose, it is fundamental to treat science as a natural process, in which kids explore and experiment trying to satisfy their enormous innate curiosity. In this way, it is advisable to start from children’s previous conceptions and to study processes and natural phenomena that occur in their closest environment. A good example of these topics is the study of the Sun’s path, which has always generated enormous curiosity since the first human civilizations, because of its importance for orientation in the time and the space. Therefore, it is not surprising that students show the same interest and fascination for the Sun, than our ancestors, since early ages. Indeed, it is very common to see how children include representations of the Sun in their drawings, being this theme the second most drawn among children from 4 to 6 years old, only behind the human figure, according to the literature.

Related to this subject, in the current work we present a sequence of diurnal astronomy activities designed for Kindergarten classrooms, with ages ranging from 4 to 6 years old. The main objective to be achieved is that students become aware of the regular movements of the Sun throughout a day. For this purpose, a sequence of activities related to shadows projection is proposed as a working tool, given that the study of shadows allows us to indirectly determine the position of the Sun above the horizon at each moment of the day. This method is appropriate for young children, because of its simplicity, everydayness and because it allows direct interaction of students with sunlight, by measuring their own shadow. To achieve the main objective, several partial goals would be reached gradually, such as: to discover the origin of shadows, to realize that shadows vary during the day according to the position of the Sun and to measure the length of the shadow at different times of the day. The results of testing the sequence of activities in two groups of students, show great improvements in children relating the presence of the shadow to the existence of a source of light: either natural, like the Sun in daytime, or artificial, like a lantern or a streetlight. They also progress in connecting the shadow to the object that generates it, which means to draw the shadow starting from the base of the corresponding object.