Our Environment
Our sky
Follow the Sun across a day and the Moon across a month, read a shadow for the time of day, and say which festivals are set by a full Moon and which by a dark sky.
The sky is not one thing. It is orange in the early morning with an orange Sun in it, hard and bright in the afternoon, and full of the Moon and thousands of stars at night. Watch it for a day and it changes; watch the Moon for a month and it changes too, and people worked out how to keep count of the days from that long before there were calendars.
Appears to move
Read the chapter's sentences about the Sun carefully and you will notice that it is careful too. The Sun *appears* to rise; it *seems* to move up; it *appears* to go down again. What you are watching is real, but the words leave room for a bigger explanation that comes in a later year.
Have a play
The same pole at three times of one day, and the three shadows it casts.
Tap any part of the picture.
Worked example
The chapter ends with a riddle. It has one colour but no fixed size, and it turns up wherever there is light. What is it?
Take the colour first. Something with a single colour, whatever it belongs to.
A shadow of a red kite is not red. Shadows are the one thing that ignores the colour of what makes them.
Try it together
Let us look up at the night sky, together.
Three questions, from the second half of the chapter.
1.The observation table gives the colour of the early morning sky, and the same colour again for the Sun in it. Which colour?
Have a go
Your turn. Shadow puppetry — telling a story with shadows on a screen — is mentioned in the chapter. What does it say about it?
Ready to practise?
Eight questions on what you have just read. Nothing is timed, and you can play as many times as you like.