I would choose the Activity set: The Sun to explore in Senior Infants, In particular I would focus on exploring Shadows, how they are created and how they change as the day progresses. Firstly as a stimulus I would keep my fingers crossed for a clear sunny day and play a game of shadow tag with the children. After the game we could engage the children with some wondering thoughts about shadows. Are they all the same/different? Do they change size? Are they always there? Can I escape my shadow? Allow children to explore these question in small groups outside.
Next, We could read Frank Asch book ‘ Moonbear’s Shadow’ in circle time. or ‘The Shadow’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A9rkH0X3J4
Children could the explore how shadows work using or creating Moonbear forst models in Aistear. Resources Green card, trees, paper, toy bear, yellow card and torches.
Questioning would be used for prompting children and children can manipulate the model to form ideas and make connections to their own world and experiences regarding shadows.
Once the children have formulated ideas about the shadowns changing depending on the suns position we could measure or own shadows outdoors usingchalk outlines. We could record these measures using the ipad camera to share and intrepret our results and draw our conclusions at the end of the day.
We could compare and test other conclusions re cloudy days, rainy days as a follow up another day. Or lead in to ‘Do all materials create shadows?’