Grade 5 Kicks Off the Year with First Hands-On Field Trip

The brand new school year for our Grade 5 students started with an exceptional trip to the Palo Alto Junior Museum on September 3rd. The students dove headfirst into an interactive science lab focused on orbital mechanics and the seasonal shifts of Earth 🌍.

Working in pairs, the students modeled the Earth's orbit around the sun using desktop globes surrounding a light source. To analyze how axial tilt influences solar intensity across different regions, they placed small magnetic markers on specified locations—California, Argentina, the Equator, and the Arctic—and measured the resulting shadow lengths across four key orbital positions. They recorded their observations on lab worksheets, directly connecting shadow length variations to seasonal shifts.

What impressed me most was seeing the students integrate these practical observations with our earlier social science lessons on Earth’s rotation and the day-night cycle. The hands-on experimentation clearly solidified their understanding of how orbit and tilt interact. It was an exceptionally rewarding day of inquiry-based learning.

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