Summer SAVY, Session 2 Day 1, Sun and Shadow (1st – 2nd)
Dear SAVY Families,
The scientist in your family had an engaging, informative first day of SAVY Summer 2024: Session Two, Sun and Shadow! Today, your scientists learned more about their role for this week. We started our class by positioning ourselves as scientists and discussing what it means to be a scientist. We talked about the steps we have to take and the safety measures we must follow to ensure that we conduct valuable scientific explorations and experiments. Ask your scientists if they can tell you what scientists do and how we can maintain our integrity as scientists!
Next, we discussed change. As scientists, change is something that we will encounter and examine with every experiment that we do. Change is all around us. Your scientists were challenged to think about something that does NOT change, and we quickly realized that this is very difficult! I was impressed by some of their creative answers; scientists noted that the past, time, and gravity do not change.
One example of something that always changes is us! WE are constantly changing. We examined our own lives so far to see how we have changed from when we were born until today and how we will continue to change in the future. Next, as a class, we came up with four generalizations of change: Change is everywhere; Change is related to time; Change can be natural or manmade, and Change may be random or predictable. We will use these four generalizations to analyze everything we do throughout our course.
Continuing with the theme of change, we acted like scientists to examine shadow changes. Using a tennis ball and flashlight, students noted changes in the tennis ball’s shadow on the wall. While this seems like a simple observation, we had a great discussion about how scientists often start their work with the simple. We repeated this process with Play-Doh and a pencil before we were challenged to develop a class definition of a shadow. Shadows are seen every day, but coming up with a definition proved to be more challenging! The definition we came up with is that a shadow is “a darkened area made by something blocking out light.” Once we defined shadows, we headed outside to find examples of natural shadows. The scientists had to find two stationary objects, record the date and time, and draw a picture of the shadow. At first, it was a bit cloudy outside, so we had trouble finding shadows. When we went back outside a few minutes later, the scientists were excited to see that so many shadows appeared! This was a great connection to our generalization that change is related to time. To finish our day, we discussed whether the shadows would change when we revisit them in the morning. Ask your SAVY scientist what their prediction was!
Questions to ask your SAVY Scientist tonight:
- What is a scientist? How did you act like a scientist today?
- What is change? What is an example of something that does not change?
- What is a shadow? How are shadows created?
- Do you predict that your shadows will change tomorrow morning? Why
Have a great night, and I look forward to working with your SAVY scientist again tomorrow! Please note that we will spend a portion of each day outside. If your child would like to bring a hat, sunglasses, sunscreen, or any other sun protective equipment, please send it in their backpacks. We will spend short amounts of time outside, with extra water breaks provided, to ensure the scientists do not get overheated.
Sincerely,
Ms. Anna Gruchot