74. Outside Summer Activities for 1st and 4th Graders Aligned with NGSS

So for first grade, the next generation science standard that I pulled was one dash ESS one dash two, make observations at different times of year to relate the amount of daylight to the time of year.

So how does this relate to summer? By charting the hours of sunlight over the course of the year, your learners and their families can see how the amount of sunlight increases until the solstice and then dwindles as summer starts fading to fall.

So one way to make this sort of data collection more engaging is to gamify it.

Since the sunrise and sunset times don't change drastically day to day, I would suggest to share with your families that they should only take data once a week.

This will allow them to see more of a difference each time they play hours of sunlight hopscotch.

To set this game up, suggest to your families to use sidewalk chalk to make a hopscotch grid with twenty-four squares in any arrangement they'd like.

Then after they've taken the sunrise and sunset times, count the number of hours of sunlight their family experienced rounded to the nearest hour.

Have them do some subtraction to determine how many hours of night they experience based on the rounded hours of sunlight.

Once they have their numbers, have them draw the same number of suns in squares as the amount of sunlight they experienced on the same number of moons as nighttime they experienced.

So as an example, this week we have been experiencing fifteen hours of sunlight and nine hours of night.

So I would randomly draw fifteen suns and nine moons on my hopscotch grid of twenty-four.

After they have their grid filled in, your learners and their families can hop on the suns only.

If your families do this as a one time activity, it will be fun, engaging, and memorable.

They'll likely remember that summer comes with a lot of sun since they were able to hop their way across the grid easily.

If your families do this throughout the summer, they'll notice that the grid gets harder to hop across as summer fades to fall, a great kinesthetic reminder that the amount of sunlight ebbs and flows throughout the year.

Also, if we're being totally honest with ourselves, the caregivers of your kiddos likely played hopscotch as children, so they will love this throwback, and we love how it helps prevent that dreaded summer slide.

And if you love this activity for reviewing the amount of daylight throughout the year and wanna modify it for your classroom or school year studies, revisit episode seventeen, six fun fall activities aligned with K through five Next Generation Science Standards at seven minutes twenty-six seconds.

In that episode, I explain a modified version where you create four different hopscotch grids to represent the four different seasons worth of daylight versus nighttime hours.

For fourth grade, the Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled was four dash PS four dash two, develop a model to describe that light reflecting from objects and entering the eye allows objects to be seen.