Earth Week: Sun Sciences

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By taking an orange and cutting out an eighth, we had a visual version of what it would look like to take a slice out of the sun. We then learned about the layers of the sun to type and label: photosphere, chromosphere, corona (exterior), radiative zone, convective zone and core (interior).

 

'The Sun' was loaded with relative facts:

 ~medium sized star: 'yellow dwarf'

~made of burning gas (mostly hydrogen)

~Sun is 4.5 billion years old 

~Sun (like any star) will die, in approx 5 million years

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Simple sunset science: Shine a light through a bowl of water, after adding a few drops of milk. If you hold up a white piece of paper on the other side, red light will shine through. The dust particles and water droplets in the air disperse the light rays, cause the sun to appear red at sunset.

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We extended our sunset study with Waldorf watercolour painting.

Frame your paper with masking tape.

Wet the entire paper with a clean brush.

Using red watercolour paint, make a ball in the center of your page-the edges will bleed.

Add yellow to the edges of the red ball. An orange circle should form.

Continue adding yellow in rings around the ball, until you reach the outer edges of the page.

 

Followed up all of our sun sciences with some sun stories:

North Wind & the Sun (fable) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51_FHblK4mc

Grandmother Spider Brings the Sun (native tale)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok_b46A9hvE