Day, Night, Sun and Moon

Begin with something your child already knows: what happens at home. Say, "We eat breakfast in the morning." Use afternoon for the time after lunch, evening for dinner and stories, and night for the dark part when your family usually sleeps.

Put your day in order

Draw four to six moments: waking, eating, playing, washing and going to bed. Mix the drawings. Ask your child to put them in order and tell the story: "First we wake up. Next we eat." Help with the words while your child moves the pictures.

After the last picture, ask, "What happens after we sleep?" Move back to the first picture. Morning, afternoon, evening and night make a pattern that repeats. Your child can use that order to predict what comes next.

Sort activities and talk about both

Make a light-colored day space and a dark night space. Give your child pictures of lunch, sleeping, brushing teeth and Moon watching. Lunch usually belongs in day and sleeping usually belongs in night. Brushing teeth belongs between them: many families do it morning and evening. Moon watching also belongs in both. We can often see the Moon in daylight.

Listen to the reason for each choice. A parent who works in a hospital may sleep during the day. Many owls, bats and moths are active at night. Nocturnal means active at night.

Let the sky name day and night

Daylight is the time when the Sun is above the horizon. Night comes when it is below the horizon and the sky grows dark. Sunrise is when the Sun appears at the horizon; sunset is when it disappears. The light before sunrise is dawn. The fading light after sunset is dusk.

Bedtime does not make night begin. In summer, your child may go to bed in daylight. In winter, darkness may arrive before dinner. Look through the window and ask, "Is it light outside now?" Keep the routine picture and the sky observation side by side.

The word "day" can also mean a whole day and night together. For a birthday countdown, "three more sleeps" makes that meaning clear. Link yesterday to the sleep just finished and tomorrow to the next sleep: "Tomorrow we visit Grandma, after tonight’s sleep."

Choose one window and look outside at different parts of the day. Talk about the sky, the light on buildings and sounds from animals or traffic. In daylight, a clear sky looks blue; clouds can make it gray. Around sunset it may turn pink or orange. After dusk, lights in homes and streets stand out against the dark.

Follow light on the ground

The Sun seems to move from the eastern part of the sky toward the west. It is low in the morning, highest around the middle of the day, and low again before sunset. Follow the changing patches of light through your windows or watch shadows outdoors. The highest Sun is not always at 12 p.m.; daylight saving time and your location change the clock time.

On a cloudy afternoon, ask, "Is it dark enough to be night?" Clouds dim sunlight, but the Sun is still above them. It is still day. Nights are usually cooler than afternoons because sunlight is no longer warming the ground there.

Where is the Sun at night?

Say, "The Sun keeps shining. It is lighting another part of Earth." Earth is a huge ball. Sunlight lights the half facing the Sun. When our home is on the dark side, places on the sunlit side have day. The Moon does not chase the Sun away.

A call to someone far away can make this real. At 7 p.m. in New York during summer, it is 9 a.m. the next day in Sydney. One family is finishing its evening while another is starting its day.

Look across the year

In Chicago, late June brings a little over 15 hours from sunrise to sunset. Late December brings about 9. Near the equator, Singapore stays close to 12 hours throughout the year. Anchorage, Alaska, has more than 19 hours in June and about 5½ in December. Day length changes much more there.

South of the equator, the seasons are reversed. Melbourne has almost 15 hours of daylight in December and about 9½ in June. Say, "Their longest days come at a different time of year."

Try a weekly window watch at the same clock time. Draw whether the sky is light, fading or dark, and add the date. Compare several weeks. Record clouds too, so a rainy evening is not confused with an earlier sunset. Sunrise and sunset listings in a weather app help you check the daylight pattern.

The Sun gives us daylight and warmth. It is a star: a huge ball of very hot, glowing gas. It makes its own light and heat, with energy from deep inside. It does not burn like a wood fire. Other stars are much farther away, which is why they look like dots at night.

Big things can look small

The Sun is about 109 times as wide as Earth. More than a million Earths could fit inside it. It is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) away. At 60 miles per hour, an imaginary nonstop car trip would take about 177 years. A distant airplane gives your child a simpler comparison: a large thing can look tiny when it is far away.

Sunlight helps us see outdoors. Plants need sunlight to grow, so it also helps provide our food. Sunlight warms the ground, water and our skin. A tree or building blocks direct sunlight and makes shade. Compare a sunny patch and a nearby shaded patch with your child: "Which feels warmer?"

Try the ice cube race

1. Choose two matching plates and two same-size ice cubes.
2. Set one plate in sunshine and one in shade at the same time.
3. Ask, "Which cube do you think will melt first?"
4. Check about every 10 minutes. Draw the cubes as they shrink.

The cube in the sun melts first in this simple test because sunlight adds warmth. Keep the cube size, plates and starting time the same. Sun or shade is the difference you want to test. If the sunny cube starts much smaller, its quicker melting could come from its size. Your child can help check: "What did we keep the same?"

Compare dark and light

Put black and white sheets of the same kind of paper in sunshine for about half an hour. Feel them together after you have checked their temperature. Dark colors take in more sunlight and warm more than light colors. This helps explain why a light shirt can feel cooler in strong sunshine.

Check slides, buckles, seats and pavement with the back of your hand before your child touches them. Sunshine can make these surfaces hot enough to burn. Never leave a child in a parked car. Use shade, hats and sunscreen when sunshine is strong. A cool breeze does not tell you how hot a metal slide has become.

Teach one clear rule: never look straight at the Sun, even for a quick peek or with sunglasses. Say, "We look at what the Sun does." Show your child a shadow or a bright patch on the floor while you say it.

Why sunglasses are not enough

Strong sunlight can damage the retina, the light-sensing layer at the back of the eye. The damage may last for life. It can happen without pain, and a blurry patch may appear hours later. Feeling comfortable is not a sign that looking is safe.

Sunglasses cut glare but do not make Sun staring safe. Squinting and thin clouds do not protect eyes enough either. Binoculars, telescopes, camera viewfinders and magnifying glasses can gather and focus sunlight, causing severe injury. Keep them out of this activity. Use a magnifying glass in shade for leaves or bugs; focused sunlight can burn things.

Practice with your body

Stand with your back to the Sun and look down. Invite your child to copy you and find a shadow. Point out, "Your shadow goes away from the Sun." Notice sunlight on walls and floors, or sunset colors away from the Sun itself. Before an outdoor sky look, use your short phrase and show the same action.

If your child has stared at the Sun and reports blur or a lasting spot, seek prompt care from an eye doctor.

Make a pinhole image together

An adult can make a small hole in a piece of card. With your backs to the Sun, let light pass through the hole onto white paper held below. Move the paper until the small image is easy to see. Look at the paper, not through the hole. The spot is an image of the Sun, not a reason to turn toward it.

On an ordinary day the image is round. During a partial solar eclipse it can look like a crescent or a circle with a bite missing. The Moon is covering part of the Sun’s face in our view.

Special eclipse glasses and handheld solar viewers must meet ISO 12312-2, and children need close adult supervision. Ordinary sunglasses cannot replace them. For a young child, watching a projected image is easier to supervise. Keep cameras and binoculars out of that setup. Protect other people’s eyes too: keep flashlight beams, lasers and reflected sunlight away from faces.

Find a clear shadow on the ground. Ask your child to wave one arm. Watch the dark outline wave too. Say, "Your body blocks sunlight. This patch gets less light." This darker patch is a shadow.

Find the three parts

A shadow needs a source of light, something that blocks it and a surface. Outdoors, those might be the Sun, your child and the sidewalk. A tree can block sunlight and cast its shadow on a wall. Help your child point to the object and its dark shape.

The shadow falls away from the Sun. With the Sun behind your child, the shadow stretches out in front. Keep your own attention on the ground. A shadow’s direction can tell you which side the sunlight comes from.

Change the outline

Raise both arms. Make two finger ears. Put your hand beside your child’s so the shadows join. Ask, "What changed when you moved your fingers?" Call that outside shape the outline.

A shadow shows shape, not the colors of a shirt or the details of a face. A mirror or still puddle gives a reflection, which can show those details. Compare a reflection and a shadow in words: "In the mirror, we can see your red sleeve. In the shadow, we see its shape."

Follow it, then find shade

As your child moves, the body blocks sunlight in a new place. That makes the shadow move too. Walk into a large building shadow and the small shadow becomes hard to pick out. It has joined the larger shaded patch. Try stepping back into sunshine and watching it appear again.

Shadow tag turns that link into a game: try to step on each other’s shadows. Take turns holding still so each person can see what changes when the other person moves.

Notice the weather

Bright sunshine gives dark shadows with clear edges. Thin clouds can make them pale and fuzzy. Thick cloud spreads light across the sky, so you may see no clear shadow at all. Darkness does not make a shadow: light is needed. A bright full Moon or a streetlight can make one at night.

Clear glass lets much of the light through, so it makes a faint shadow or almost none.

Choose a sunny, flat place away from traffic. It should stay sunny from morning to afternoon. Bring colored sidewalk chalk and string, and take photos before rain washes your marks away. The question is, "How does the shadow change while you stand in the same place?"

Mark, trace and return

1. Draw around your child’s feet. Add a direction mark for their toes.
2. Have your child stand upright on those marks, facing the same way each time.
3. Trace the shadow and write the time beside it.
4. Return around midday and in the afternoon. Use a different color each time.

Use a place where your child can keep looking down or away from the Sun. Keeping the feet, body position and facing direction the same makes the outlines easier to compare. Turning the child at each visit would change the outline as well as the sunlight angle.

Read the pattern

Morning shadows are long and point roughly west. As the Sun climbs higher, shadows shorten. When it is highest, the shadow is shortest. Later, the shadow grows longer and points roughly east. As the Sun seems to move, the shadow points away from it.

For a 40-inch child (about 100 cm) near Philadelphia in late March or September, a shadow about three hours before the highest Sun is about 62 inches (158 cm), pointing northwest. At the highest Sun it is about 34 inches (85 cm), pointing north. About three hours later it is about 62 inches again, pointing northeast.

Use string or heel-to-toe steps to compare lengths. Keep the same person taking steps. Ask, "Which tracing is longer than you? Which is shortest?" After two tracings, let your child mark a guess for later, then compare it with the real shadow.

Compare seasons and places

At about 40° north, the same child’s midday shadow is about 12 inches (30 cm) in late June and 80 inches (about 200 cm) in late December. The higher summer Sun gives a shorter shadow.

Midday shadows point north in the mainland United States, Canada and Europe. They point south in southern Australia and New Zealand. Near the equator, including Hawaii and northern Australia, the direction changes during the year. A midday shadow need not vanish, and the shortest one need not happen at 12 on the clock.

Without an outdoor chalk spot, fix a toy and paper on a sunny windowsill. Mark the shadow tip at different times without moving the toy. The marks record a changing direction while that window receives sunlight.

The Moon is a round, rocky ball, about a quarter as wide as Earth. It is our nearest neighbor in space, about 239,000 miles (384,000 kilometers) away. An imaginary car traveling nonstop at 60 miles per hour would need about 5½ months to reach it.

Where its light comes from

The Moon makes no light of its own. Sunlight bounces off it and reaches our eyes. Shine a flashlight on a ball to show the difference between the light and the thing it lights. The Sun and stars make light; the Moon is lit by the Sun.

A crescent Moon is still a whole ball. We see only a thin part of its sunny half. Sometimes the darker part glows faintly too. This is earthshine: sunlight bounces off Earth onto the Moon, then back to us.

Find it in daylight

Look for a pale Moon during an afternoon walk or on the way out in the morning. Around the first half Moon, afternoon is a good time. Around the second half Moon, morning is useful. Say, "The Moon can be in our sky during the day too." Seeing it once in daylight can change a child’s night-only picture.

On a car ride, the Moon may seem to follow you. Nearby houses quickly change position in your view. The Moon is so far away that its direction changes very little during your short journey.

Notice its face

The dark gray patches are broad plains of old, dark lava rock. Lighter areas include high ground and mountains. Craters are round hollows made by rocks crashing into the Moon. People imagine different pictures in the patches, including a face or a rabbit. Invite your child to describe a picture, then explain what the patches are made of.

We see mostly the same side of the Moon, so familiar patches stay recognizable. It has no air people can breathe and no wind or rain like Earth’s. Astronauts need spacesuits. Twelve astronauts walked there between 1969 and 1972; their footprints remain because wind and rain do not erase them.

A Moon near the horizon can look huge and orange. The huge look is a trick of our eyes and brain; matched photos show almost the same width. Its orange light has passed through more air near the horizon. Ask your child to notice the color without treating the changing view as a change in the rocky ball.

Invite your child to name a Moon shape with everyday words: "thin," "half" or "round." Then add phase, the name for the Moon’s bright shape as seen from Earth. The Sun lights half of the Moon. We see different amounts of that lit half on different days.

Name the shapes

The ball has not broken or lost a piece. Clouds can hide it, but they do not make the regular phases. Earth’s shadow makes a lunar eclipse, which is a different event and can happen only at full Moon.

Put the shapes in order

Start with new Moon. The bright part grows through crescent, half and gibbous to full. Then it shrinks through gibbous, half and crescent to new again. Waxing means the bright part is growing; waning means it is shrinking.

The full cycle takes about 29½ days. The first half Moon comes about a week after new Moon. Full Moon follows about another week later; the second half comes about a week after that. Astronomers call the half Moons first quarter and last quarter. These names tell where we are in the cycle. They do not mean we see a quarter-circle of light.

Show a lit half

In a dim room, light one side of a pale ball with a flashlight. Keep the ball and light still. Move your viewpoint around the ball together without blocking the beam. From one place you see a thin lit sliver, from another half the face, and from near the flashlight a bright full face. The ball keeps the same shape while the amount of bright surface in your view changes.

Cut paper circles and color the bright shapes. Make a growing row and a shrinking row. Ask, "What comes after this growing half?" A fuller, gibbous shape follows.

In a typical northern view, waxing looks lit on the right and waning on the left. Southern Australia and New Zealand see the reverse. A crescent near the equator can look like a bowl. Compare drawings over several days to tell growing from shrinking. Occasionally a calendar month contains two full Moons; the second is often called a "blue moon," but it need not look blue.

Make a diary with about 30 dated boxes. Draw a circle in each box when you look, and let your child color the bright part they see. Add the time. Draw a cloud if clouds block the view; leave an empty box when you did not look. A blank box and an unseen new Moon are different records.

Start with an evening crescent

Use a Moon-phase calendar, NASA or the US Naval Observatory to find a new Moon date. Begin a day or two later. Look low in the west after the Sun has completely set. The first thin growing crescent is often there early enough for a young child’s bedtime.

Visit every two or three clear days. Compare each new drawing with the last one: "Is more bright today?" A thicker crescent leads toward a half Moon. Around that first half, try an afternoon look too. The full Moon rises in the east around sunset.

Move some looks to morning

After full Moon, moonrise is later from day to day, averaging about 50 minutes later. The shrinking Moon may rise after bedtime. Try a morning look instead. Around the last half Moon, morning is especially useful. The last thin crescent appears low in the east before sunrise.

Keep your child’s eyes well away from the Sun on any daytime or early-morning look. A missing bedtime sighting does not mean the Moon has vanished. It may be below the horizon, behind cloud or in a different part of the sky.

Read a sample month

Counting from new Moon, a diary might show a thin crescent on day 2, a thicker crescent on day 4, half around day 7 and gibbous around day 11. Full Moon comes around day 15. By day 22 a shrinking half can be seen in the morning; around day 26 a thin shrinking crescent follows. Around day 29 or 30, new Moon begins another cycle. The exact phase dates vary, so use your calendar to plan each look.

In the mainland United States, the growing Moon usually looks lit on the right and shrinking on the left in an upright view. In southern Australia and New Zealand, the view is reversed. Draw what you actually see, including a tilted crescent.

Make and check a prediction

After several growing shapes, ask, "What might it look like in three days?" Put your child’s guess in pencil in a future box. Later, add the observed shape beside it. If cloud blocks the view, record cloud and try again on a clear day.

At the end, spread out the drawings. Find the growing part, full Moon and shrinking part. If mornings were too busy, save the first two weeks and watch the shrinking shapes during another month.

Start with a clear evening and a comfortable place to sit together. A short look can begin with one bright star. Ask, "Does it look like a dot or a pointy drawing?" Real stars appear as points of light. The pointed shape on paper is a way people draw them.

What a star is

A star is a huge ball of hot, glowing gas that makes its own light. The Sun is a star, the closest one. Other stars look tiny because they are so far away. Light from the next nearest star takes more than four years to reach us.

Stars differ in size, brightness and color. Some look bluish-white; others look yellow, orange or reddish. Their light passes through moving air above us, which bends it slightly and makes it seem to flicker. That is twinkling.

Why we see more at night

Stars are there during the day too. Sunlight makes the sky so bright that we cannot see their faint light. To compare, notice how a flashlight’s light is easy to see in a dark room but hard to pick out in bright daylight. The flashlight did not switch off when the surroundings grew brighter.

Streetlights and building lights brighten the night sky too. This light pollution hides faint stars. A dark rural sky can show a few thousand at once; a brightly lit city may show only a few dozen. A cloudy sky blocks the view in a different way.

Give your eyes time

Choose the darkest easy-to-reach place, such as a backyard with its lights off. Bring a blanket and warm clothes. Put bright screens away. Your eyes need about 20 minutes to become used to the dark, so more stars become visible as you wait. A dim red-covered flashlight helps you see the ground while keeping the surroundings dark.

Winter can be convenient because darkness arrives earlier. In summer, a camping trip or a special later bedtime may give you a view. Let your child’s comfort set the length of the outing.

Notice moving lights

Airplanes can show blinking colored lights. Satellites often look like steady points moving across the sky. A quick streak, called a meteor or "shooting star," comes from a small bit of space rock or dust glowing as it enters the air. It is not a star falling out of the sky.

When your child says, "The stars came out," you can answer, "Now the sky is dark enough for us to see them." Invite a second look after a few quiet minutes and ask whether any fainter dots have become visible.

Look for a few bright stars that seem to make a picture. People have imagined pictures in the sky for thousands of years. Their names and stories help us find the same patterns again. The lines are imagined; there are no glowing lines joining the stars.

Find a familiar shape

The Big Dipper has seven bright stars, like a pan with a long handle. It is part of the larger Great Bear constellation. In most of the United States and Canada, look in the northern sky; spring evenings give a high view.

On evenings from about December to March, look for Orion. Three bright stars in a short row form Orion’s Belt. Four bright corner stars make a larger box around them. Betelgeuse looks reddish and Rigel bluish-white. From Australia or New Zealand, Orion looks upside down compared with the northern view.

The Southern Cross has four bright stars in a small cross or kite shape. It is a familiar southern sight, including in Australia and New Zealand, but is hidden from most of the United States and Canada. Where you stand on Earth changes the sky you can see.

A pattern is many stars

A constellation is a named area of sky, often linked with an imagined star picture. Astronomers use 88 official areas to cover the whole sky. Stars in a picture can look close together while lying at very different distances from us. The picture is not one giant star.

The Pleiades are a small cluster that can look misty. They are easy to find on many evenings from about November to March. Names include the Seven Sisters in ancient Greek stories, Subaru in Japan and Matariki for Māori in New Zealand. Different communities have their own stories and traditions about the same cluster.

Share and invent stories

Introduce a story by naming whose it is: "The ancient Greeks told a story about a hunter called Orion." Choose books and accounts from the culture whose story you are sharing. People have also used the stars to find directions and notice seasonal changes.

Then make a sky picture of your own. Draw white dots on dark paper and ask your child to join some into a shape. A bent line might become a kite or a bird. Ask, "What story could go with your picture?" Your child’s invented name can sit beside the established names you find in a sky guide.

Choose a clear evening with little moonlight to find fainter stars. A bright full Moon washes them out. Your Moon diary can help you choose a darker evening for a star-pattern hunt.