Explorify at home: Earth, seasons and time
This collection of activities about the Earth, seasons and time is ideal to do at home with your little explorers. Enjoy a good afternoon of science each week!
An egg timer
Explorify at home is a special series of science activities for parents and carers of primary school children who are now learning at home. We define activities by age and curriculum topics in Explorify, but these collections are also suitable to do all together as a family of mixed aged children. Or if your little scientist just wants to explore further, pick something from the other age sections for inspiration! Teachers can find out about our full (free!) classroom resource at the bottom of this page.
Parents, read on!
This collection is all about Earth, seasons and time. The movement of the earth around the sun gives us our seasons.
For children aged 5-7
Hands-on activity: Look for signs of the changing seasons from spring into summer. Different plants will grow and day length will change. Hopefully we will have warmer weather too! You could help your child make a seasonal diary of the changes that they see. Try to make a record once each week.
Age 7-9
First, take a close-up look: As we move from spring into summer, the position of the sun appears to change. It’s the earth that has moved but it will appear, for example, as if the sun is setting in a different place.
Hands-on activity: If you can, take a photo each week of the sunset and look at the pictures side by side, you’ll notice together how the sun appears to be changing place.
Age 9-11
Hands-on activity: We use our movement around the sun to give us time. Can you make a timer that lasts exactly a minute? You’ll need some recycling materials such as yoghurt pots, something to make a hole and some salt, rice, sugar or similar that will flow. Can you make your timer so that it can be reused?
Please note children should be supervised when doing any practical activity. Do not look directly at the sun.
That's all for this week!
We hope your little scientists have enjoyed Earth, seasons and time this week. We'd love to know how you got on. You can follow us on Twitter or Facebook or email us if you have any feedback on this collection.
Take it further:
- Visit STEM Learning, to explore their support for parents and carers with home learning.
- Watch the BBC Bitesize Daily science programmes. Previous programmes including versions for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland can be found on the iPlayer.
- Browse our other collections – there are more added each week!
Are you a primary school teacher who has yet to sign up to Explorify?
If you are a teacher who hasn't discovered Explorify before, you can sign up and explore the whole website with over 400 free activities. (It's free, as it's funded by charitable foundation Wellcome Trust. Our mission is to help you enhance your science teaching and get your pupils thinking like scientists!) We provide background science, to help you field questions from your pupils and ideas to take our curriculum-linked activities further. Something to get your teeth into for when you're back in the classroom!
Image credits: Hourglass by Chris Zuniga via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0
Video credit: Eirik Solheim via Vimeo CC0