The relationship between the earth and the sun

The always brilliant and funny Bill Nye does an excellent job making learning about the sun fun and engaging. Since we can't take students to the sun, he does a great job of bringing the sun to our students.

Here is a quick video that demonstrates how the sun affects our seasons and days and nights. The narrator sounds a bit robotic, but the information is relevant and the 3D images create wonderful graphics.

Discovery Kids gives a detailed yet simple description that explains how and why seasons change on earth, and how the sun relates to these changes.

This link that I found through NASA Kids provides a plethora of information on the sun and it connects to earth. In addition, it includes a really cool video on large sun spots.

This link provides fun facts on the sun, but is probably more suited for students in grades 5-12.

I love this engaging video on the relationship between the sun and earth. The narrator does a fantastic job relating to what interests kids and puts the facts in kid-friendly terms. It's also not very long, so it would be a wonderful activating strategy to introduce a lesson.

Here is another interesting kid friendly video on how NASA launched two satellites to collect data about the sun. This link does a great job bringing out space to the classroom.

Here is a song that teaches about earth's orbit and its engaging because it is put to the tune of the new hit song, "Some Nights," by Fun. Students would love this and any excuse to dance in the classroom is alright with me.

This is a website for teachers to use to gain more resources for this earth science standard. It includes a variety of other links as well.

Here is a teacher's board on Pinterest completely devoted to elementary earth, sun, and moon activities. This link provides anchor chart ideas, hands-on experiments, and fun crafts that both students and teachers would enjoy. I would definitely use this ideas in my classroom.

This website provides an interactive game where students can change the time of day and see how shadows change and how that relates to the sun.

Here is video that describes how the moon and earth revolve around the sun and how it affects our seasons. It gives images an diagrams that simply explain this relationship. However, the song is a bit annoying.