You could be forgiven for thinking that this photo is a scene from the movie, ‘City of Angels’. In fact, it is part of the Year 5 Science Unit, ‘Earth Moon and Sun’, where 5G answered the big question, ‘Why do our shadows move throughout the day?’

The girls observed the direction and length of their shadows at various times throughout the day. They drew around their partners’ shadows at 9.00 am then measured and recorded this data on a chart in a Google Sheet. They repeated the measurements at 2.30 pm (when, thankfully, the Sun appeared through a break in the clouds), recording the data on the same chart.

We discussed the daily pattern of the Sun moving from east to west. In our previous lesson, we had explored why we have day and night so the girls were able to explain that, in fact, the Earth is moving and not the Sun!

The lesson was completed with an excursion to the sundial, in the Christchurch Botanical Gardens. By studying the gnomon (the rod that casts a shadow on the sundial to show the passing of time), the girls were able to understand that they had used themselves as the gnomon in the activity above. Just like their shadows, the shadow cast by the gnomon becomes shorter as the Sun climbs higher in the sky.