The sun and shadows

Ages 3 to 5 Read and do together · about 15 minutes

Read together

Where is your shadow? It follows you!

Light cannot go through you, so there is a shadow.

Do it

1. On a sunny day, stand so your shadow is on the ground. Wave your arms and watch it.
2. Trace a toy's shadow with chalk. Come back after a few hours and see how it moved.
3. Make shadow animals with your hands in a dim room with a torch.
4. Never look straight at the sun.

Talk about it

• Why do you have a shadow?
• Did the shadow move?

For the grown-up

Shadows form when an object blocks light. They move through the day because the Sun seems to cross the sky as the Earth turns. Use sun protection.

Mark as done

← Previous lesson

Where this comes from

• NGSS Lead States, Next Generation Science Standards: For States, By States (National Academies Press, 2013), performance expectation 1-PS4-3 (light and shadows)
• NASA, Space Place pages on the Sun and on day and night

Written with AI assistance and checked against the sources listed. Please read it before sharing it with a child.