What children will learn
- Collect and record data accurately over a week
- Subtract times to calculate hours and minutes of daylight
- Graph data and describe a pattern linked to Earth's tilt and orbit
You'll need
- This page printed
- Internet access with a parent's permission, or a printed almanac
- Graph paper or plain paper and a ruler
- A pencil
Safety first
- Never look directly at the sun, even when it is low at sunrise or sunset.
- Watch sunrise or sunset from your own yard or with an adult.
How to do it
- Look up the sunrise and sunset times for your town each day. Use the Bureau of Meteorology (Australia), MetService (New Zealand) or a reliable almanac.
- Write the times in the table at the same time each day. If you're up early or outside at dusk, watch the sky change too.
- Calculate the daylight length: sunset time minus sunrise time. Tip: count up to the next full hour first, then add the whole hours, then the leftover minutes.
- Draw a line graph with the days along the bottom and daylight length up the side. Are the days getting longer or shorter?
- Talk about why: Earth is tilted, so as it orbits the Sun, our part of the world leans towards or away from it. In the Southern Hemisphere the shortest day is in June and the longest is in December.
Make it easier
Record only the sunset time and notice whether it gets earlier or later each day.
Make it harder
Track a city far to the north and one far to the south (for example Darwin and Hobart, or Auckland and Invercargill) and compare the two graphs.
Parent tip: Changes over one week can be small — sometimes less than a minute a day — so praise careful recording. If daylight saving starts or ends during the week, talk about why the clock times jump but the daylight length doesn't.
Sunrise & Sunset Tracker
Name: ____________________ Date: ____________
| Day | Sunrise | Sunset | Daylight (h, min) |
| Day 1 | |||
| Day 2 | |||
| Day 3 | |||
| Day 4 | |||
| Day 5 | |||
| Day 6 | |||
| Day 7 |
Town: ______________ Source of times: ______________ Daylight = sunset − sunrise.
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Fantastic work! Every little step helps you grow.