Exploring Sunlight, Water and Soil: And Earth Science Unit

Have you ever tried to explain to your children how the earth revolves around the sun or how we reconcile the fact that the sun doesn’t actually rise and set? How do we explain day and night? How do we explain the water cycle and how water changes state? These are some pretty amazing facts of life and our world is an amazing place.

I love to touch on these subjects and then delve in completely to learn more about our world. I love to see my children’s faces light up when they lean some incredible things about the earth the solar system we live in. Come and look at the adventure we had with this unit exploring sunlight, water and soil and hopefully, you will be inspired to go on one, too.

We used the Nancy Larson Publishers Science 1 Curriculum. We simply LOVE it! This is the third unit we do in this curriculum and we are definitely looking forward to learning a lot more with Nancy Larson. As you can see, these are the lesson topics in Unit C. The unit has nine lessons that cover sunlight, water and soil.

Exploring Sunlight

One of our lessons covered what the sun gives us: heat/warmth, light, etc. We went outside and felt warm because the sun was out and then we went outside at night and felt that it was cooler out because the sun wasn’t out. We also learned about shadows that the sun creates.

We went outside in the morning and noticed that their shadows were small, then at noon, their shadows are almost non-existent and in the afternoon, they were bigger. In the evening, the were very long. They all had to do with the sun’s position in the sky.

We also learned about day and night. We used a flashlight and a rotating globe to explain it. Once we spoke about night and day and how the earth goes around in its axis once every 24 hours, we discussed how the earth also rotates around the sun. Once it completes that cycle, a year has gone by.

Nancy Larson’s booklet and worksheets for Unit C were very helpful on learning about sunlight, day and night and so many other topics. They present information at an appropriate reading level that moves up in level of difficulty as the lesson progress. It is so cool how they ease students into reading harder material and they don’t feel daunted by it.

For a list of other books we read for this unit (not included in the kit), go to the end of this post.

Exploring Water and Soil

Once we got into the water and soil lessons, my children were fascinated to find out just how much we (humans) use water. They had never thought of it, so the only thing they responded at first was that water was for drinking. As we conversed more about this and created a list of all the uses for water, wow, they were amazed. We also came up with ways to conserve water in most of the uses we listed. I love watching them remind each other to conserve water.

Soil. What an awesome topic to cover with little ones! We learned about different types of soil and what it does here on earth. We discussed gardens and the types of soil we can use to grow the best crops. We also discussed erosion and weathering. Soil is so important, not only to grow our food, but also to keep our world beautiful and full of vegetation.

I hope that this little glimpse into our unit has inspired you! Take a look at this awesome Science kit. You and your children will love it. For you, the homeschooling mom, this is the perfect program because you are provided with everything you need for each lesson.

The scripts are set up to be followed verbatim of to be used as an open-ended guide to expound on topics as the opportunities arise. We add some youtube videos as well as follow the resource list provided to read more books on the subject. For children, Nancy Larson Science 1 is such a fun program because they will look forward to each lesson and they will learn so much.