Open Wide, Look Inside

So where does light come from any way?  Teach your students about the properties of light and its source of heat in a fun and easy way.  Day Light, Night Light:  Where Light Comes From by Franklyn M. Branley & illustrated by Stacey Schuett  beautifully illustrates and simply teaches the reader how the sun, the stars, and light bulbs make light so we can see.

Turn off the light!  Suddenly it’s dark.  But soon you’ll be able to see the things in your room, like your desk or your teddy bear.  They might look fuzzy, but when your eyes get used to the dark, you can see them.  Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science series originator Franklyn M. Branley and Stacey Schuett have teamed up to shed some light on the question of how we can see even when it’s dark.  Read this book and you’ll learn how the sun’s light reaches us, and how your night light works.   Branley (1998) writes, “Almost everything we see-books, trees, houses, cars, people, bugs, and birds-reflects light to us.  Without light we could see nothing at all”(pg. 32).  For this Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science entry, originally published in 1975, Schuett brings an artistic spirit to Branley’s facts about the origins of light: A child perched in a treehouse discovers light from a luminous jar of fireflies; candles on a birthday cake illustrate the concept of light coming from sources that are hot.

Curriculum Connections
In the area of physical science, the  Virginia Science SOL’s for grades K-3  stresses the importance of  understanding the basic relationship between the sun and the earth, where shadows come from and the basics of energy and matter.  Day Light, Night Light:  Where Light Comes From is appropriate for multiple grade levels and could be used to directly address SOL’s K.7a, K.7 b, 1.6a,  and 1.6b specifically.

If you would like to shed more light on the properties that were discussed  in Day Light, Night Light:  Where Light Comes From, here are a few suggestions for grades K-3:

• Read the story aloud with the students and talk about what is going on in each picture.
• Ask questions throughout the story, such as:  “Does a nail make light?”  “Would there be any way that we could make the nail produce light?”
• Give the white dish experiment as a homework assignment to older students:   Take a white dish into a room and put it down.  Then turn out the light.  At first you won’t see the dish.  Your eyes have to adjust to the darkness.  That means your pupils open wider so they can let in more light.  Then your eyes can use other light sources, like the streetlight outside.  Pretty soon you may see the white dish.  Have the students make predictions about the experitment and then write down their observations.
• You may also try:  “Look around you.”  “How many things do you see that send out their own light?”  Discuss different things that you might see during the day and different things that you might see at night.

Additional Resources
Try these websites where you’ll find lesson plans, worksheets, activities and coloring pages to aid your physical science education quest.

• The Science Spot - physical science lesson plans, worksheets, PowerPoint presentations, lab ideas, videos and more links to more cool physical science websites!
• Discovery Education - a physcial science lesson plan library - grades K-12
• Learner.org - discusses the science of light and provides several lab ideas
• Education World - lesson plans and worksheets plus links to other subjects

Book:  Day Light, Night Light:  Where Light Comes From
Author:  Franklyn M. Branley
Illustrator:  Stacey Schuett
Publisher:  HarperCollins
Pulication Date:  1998
Pages:  32 pages
Grade Range:  K-3
ISBN-13:  978-0064451710