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Millburn Central School To Facilitate Solar Energy Activities
By Randee Hudson, Millburn Central School
August 23, 2007
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Let the Sun Shine: hands-on solar energy activities @ your library integrates energy activities into the school library media program at Millburn Central School in Wadsworth. The school library is a classroom for all students in the school. Randee Hudson, the teacher-librarian, will facilitate solar energy activities in the school library for all students from kindergarten through third grade.

Let the Sun Shine teaches students the power of the sun (kindergarten), how to measure solar energy (first grade), harnessing the power of the sun to generate electricity for the home (second grade) and to power cars (third grade). Students will demonstrate their projects at “Days in the Sun” family activity programs. The school library courtyard provides a sunny laboratory for solar energy activities.

• Kindergarten students will listen to The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. In the story, Peter has a dream that the sun came out and melted all the snow. Students will compare melting rates of snow in the sunshine (solar energy) with snow in the shade. They will observe the melting rates of the snow on plates with different conductivity.
• First grade students will listen to My Light by Molly Bang. This nonfiction book tells how the sun provides energy to the earth. Students will measure solar energy with radiometers. Students will create bead people with ultraviolet detecting beads. They will experiment with ways to increase and decrease exposure of their bead people to ultraviolet rays.
• Second grade students will listen to The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton. This award-winning classic story tells of a little house that has the city grow up around it. Second graders study how communities change. In their energy story time, they will build models of houses powered by solar energy to show how houses have changed since The Little House was written in 1943.
• Third grade students will listen to If I Built a Car by Chris Van Dusen. Jack designs the ultimate fantasy car. In their energy story time, third graders will build cars powered by solar energy.

Funding for this project was provided by A+ For Energy, a BP Energy Education Program.

About the Author

Randee Hudson is the school library media specialist at Millburn Central School, a K-8 attendance center in Wadsworth, IL.

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