Hello Sharon,
Have you a particular story book in mind? If you review some of the previous posts in the forum you will find a wealth of suggestions.
You could also look at the ESERO activity Day and Night in the World about nocturnal animals or What do you do in Day (part of Module 2’s downloads).
What do you expect the children will do with the cotton wool when they create day and night scenes?
You might want to look ahead to the Sun resource (also part of Module 2) from Dr Maeve Liston from Mary Immaculate that suggests:
Activity: The Day and Night Sky
You will need: Pictures of the day and night sky, paper and crayons.
1. Place different pictures of the day and night sky on display and ask the children “what are the differences?” between the two.
Questions: Describe the sky during the day. Describe the sky at night. What is the difference between day and night?
2. Ask them to list as many things they see in the sky at night (Moon, Stars) and during the day (Sun, Moon, Clouds). Get them to describe shapes, size, textures and colours of these objects and the sky using descriptive and comparative language for example light, dark, bright, shade etc. Discuss how we are never in total darkness because of the Moon and stars.
3. Ask them to draw pictures of a day and night sky or make a collage of a day and night sky as a whole class group.
Your questions are interesting, we have found that in response to “Why do you think it gets dark at night?” young children tend to offer people-centric responses such as “So we can go to sleep”, and so we often re-word this to ask “What do you think is happening to the world when it gets dark?”