Easy and Fun Craft for Showing Kids How a Solar Eclipse Works

Hello Friends,

Just a short post to share a fun and easy craft for showing kids how a solar eclipse works. We start school on Friday and our first full day of school will be Monday, August 21 - the day of the eclipse! Yikes! Our whole school will be wearing the "special" glasses and I wanted my little ones to understand why we have to wear them and what is happening, so this is what I came up with....

I chose blue as the background for this craft because the sky looks blue in the daytime and I want my kids to understand that this is happening during the day. This is a piece of 12" x 18" blue construction paper cut in half.

1. Cut a large yellow circle onto construction paper. The diameter of my circle is 8 inches. Glue the yellow sun to the top of the blue paper. I made my paper vertical, but it would probably also work horizontally.

 2. Cut a circle with a diameter of 7 inches onto black construction paper. I chose black because the moon looks black during a solar eclipse. Do NOT glue the black circle to the paper. You could also make the black circle the same size as the sun. I wanted to keep my circle smaller because we are having a partial eclipse of the sun in my area. If you are having a total eclipse, make your moon's diameter large.



3.  Punch a hole in the very top of the blue construction paper. Punch a circle in the tops of the yellow sun and black moon. Insert a large sized brad.



4. Add the words by gluing them in the appropriate places. The kids can now move the moon in front of the sun showing how the moon will be blocking the light from the sun for a few minutes. This shows them why it is important to not look directly at the sun without protecting their eyes. They will still be looking at the sun! It also shows why it will look like night for a short time.

If you would like the words for this easy craft, click the image below. It will take you to a Google doc link. Please know that some schools block downloading a google doc that it is not within your district. If this happens to you, try downloading at home.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1ubUzeAYMczSF9aWUZiS2RKOG8/view?usp=sharing

Until next time!

Blessings,

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