day/night alternation, light and shadow

Ask the students what happens when the sun shines too much: the city wakes up and comes alive. Which hinders him from catching his ray. He will therefore have to use stratagems to achieve his ends. Collect students’ representations of day/night alternation. Why does the sun “rise” and “set”? After this collection start the sequence.

To illustrate this lesson, we can offer students fundamentals videos on this subject. Older children can be asked to build a model; a file is available on the lamap website.

As part of this work the notion of shadow will certainly have been mentioned. We can return to the video and ask the students to show the shadows, those of buildings, pyramids. Why are the shadows on this side? Because they are opposite the light source. Then put it into practice and ask the students, one sunny day, to go into the schoolyard and draw their shadows with chalk on the ground. Identify where the sunlight comes from and the direction of the shadows. Then do the same work in class with an unnatural light source this time (a lamp) and draw the shadows of various objects found in the class.

After all these manipulation phases we will be able to move on to drawing. Ask the students to draw a character or an object, a natural light source or not, then its shadow, this time without supports. Ask yourself the question of colors, which ones to choose for light and shadows? This work will allow you to see if the students have understood correctly.