Exploring the sun (and the cardinal directions)

I have written in a previous post (The accidental panorama picture) about how we made a "panorama picture" with magazine cutouts, which was originally a drawing project. Drawing a panorama picture is difficult, because you have to draw and position objects which are not visible normally at the same time with your eyes. So when little Bear tried to draw, he filled very quickly the whole page with less than half of the things which should have been on the picture. So instead of drawing. we cut out the little paper buildings, hills, cranes and chimneys we see from our terrace and arranged them, tossed them here and there until we were happy with the result. This became such a long and interesting activity, that it became of a project on its own. The reason we made them is that we wanted to mark during a day where we see the sun on the sky.

This was our panorama picture, but when we started the sun project, it has received a few new elements, like a new chimney and the smoke coming from another one.

Now it was time to explore the sun.

Starting at 10am, we went to the terrace every two hours and tried to define where do we see the sun. Above which roof, chimney etc. and how high on the sky.

Just a safety warning: Be very careful, to do this, so that your Bear does not look at the sun directly! We used sunglasses and we covered our eyes, so really just saw some rays of the sun to help to judge where the sun is.

We cut out small yellow circles as the sun and glued one to the right spot each time. Little Bear written under the "sun" the exact time.

If you see the whole picture, by the evening the sun travels through a nice semicircle. This gives a nice opportunity to talk about cardinal directions (Himmelsrichtung). It is not easy for a 6 years old little Bear to remember, but I taught him the little poem my father taught me when I was small. I could not find anything similar in English, but here is the Hungarian and the German versions:

"Im Osten geht die Sonne auf. Im Süden nimmt sie Mittagslauf. Im Westen wird sie untergehen. Im Norden ist sie nie zu sehen."

"Előttem van észak, hátam mögött dél, balra a nap nyugszik, jobbra pedig kél."

And here is little Bear's final sun exploration project: