Summer Solstice Activities for Kids

Summer solstice is a great time for STEAM activities! We love celebrating the longest day of the year with our favorite summer recipes, fun experiments and art projects- like this countdown chain…

One of the reasons I love being a parent educator is the honor and privilege I have of sharing special things with my kids, like celebrating the solstices, equinoxes and other stuff that often gets lost in the shuffle of traditional schooling. Following more of a nature calendar has been really magical for us.

“Summer Solstice Count Down (or up) Chains”

This is a craft lesson, a calendar lesson and a seasonal lesson all rolled into one amazingly easy activity that incorporates math and writing. I love multitasking.

Here’s what you’ll need:

We used a bunch of construction paper we had on hand, this was a great opportunity to talk about how important it is to be resourceful, use what’s available and get creative (both to save money and be more kind to Mother Earth). You’ll also need something to write or color with, something to connect the chain links with I recommend tape or staples, glue/glue stick didn’t work very well- but again, making due with what’s on hand is always a win. We used my daughter’s wall calendar as well as printed out blank May and June calendar pages.

What is Summer Solstice?

I love starting a lesson this way, with a question for us to discuss and/or write about. This presents loads of opportunity to discuss “what is an educated guess?” “What is an inference?” and ask questions like “What makes you think so?”.

Generally, when we explore a topic like this, new or review, we start with discussion or writing, then I read them a bit about the topic, covering the general definition but with lots of room to gather more detail. Then we watch a SHORT video if I can find one and move from there into activity mode. I’ve found this rhythm really helps keep my kids engaged and excited about what we are learning and what comes next in our lesson!

Here is how I break it down for the kids:

Solstices an equinoxes are prehistoric events that have been celebrated for thousands and thousands of years.

Stonehenge is over 5,000 years old and the sun rises perfectly through it on Summer Solstice and sets perfectly through it on the Winter Solstice- that’s no mistake.

The Summer Solstice is the LONGEST day of the year, when we get the most sunlight- up to 17 hours in some places!!

As we know, the Earth is spinning (they always like to remind me that it spins so fast we can’t feel it, then they pause like they are making SURE they can’t feel it), We use some physical examples here- I grabbed one of the dog-o’s tennis balls and drew on it (if you have a pencil and a wiffle ball or ball with holes in it, use that!) If the axis of the Earth were perfectly vertical the amount of daylight and nighttime would remain the same, but because the axis is at a slight angle, we get seasons! YAY!!

This is where we review the 4 seasons, the 12 months- you can expand on that how ever you want and appropriate to your kiddos comprehension level, it can be a quick review or a more in depth portion of the lesson.

Earth spins on it’s tilted axis, and at the same time it’s in orbit, traveling around the sun, so sometimes we lean toward the sun, and sometimes we lean away!

As I mentioned above we have a flow of presenting info, discussing and or writing about it and then watching a video or two. For lesson we watched THIS National Geographic Video first, followed by THIS one.

How many days until Summer Solstice?

Next, we moved into the math part of this lesson. We started with a printable May and June calendar page (found HERE). After finding what day it is today, the kids counted the days until solstice. Adapt this to your kiddos level and play with those numbers a bit. For example, I had my kindergartner take a pink highlighter and highlight all the days that were even numbers, my second grader highlighted the multiples of 3….etc.

We did this activity on May 19th so there were 32 days from that day until the solstice. . We did a few brief exercises with the number 32. Is it odd or even? Can it be divided by 2? 3? What other number/numbers can it be divided by? Is it prime? This can just be discussion- you don’t even need to have a worksheet or anything formal! I use dry erase boards, we have three of THESE so we can all use em at the same time or I can set up several different boards for one or more lessons, white boards are freakin life over here.

I find this is the way stuff really tends to stick, when we do activities a couple times a week along with discussion to build their problem solving muscles.

Activity time!

They took a “body break” for lunch at this point and after that we moved on to the crafting (and some more math! and some writing! ). We knew it was 32 days till Solstice and we knew we were going to make a chain to count down/up the days….but, how many pieces of paper would we need, and how could we figure that out?

This is where I listen to their ideas, and they take turns sharing and brainstorming together- it’s always really insightful because as adults it’s so easy to fall to logic and our massive foundation of base skills and knowledge, so watching and listening as they come at it from their 5 or 8 year old perspective is really fantastic.

After some trials my 8 year old realized if you fold the paper in half it makes two big rectangles, then if you fold it twice more you have 4 medium sized rectangles, but that if you cut the paper into 4 equal pieces they are really thick and don’t make great chain-width strips. So we cut those 4 pieces in half one more time and BOOM! 1/8 of a piece of construction paper was perfect for a chain link. So, how many pieces would we need to get 33 strips? Oh! Wait, there are TWO kids, so how many will we need total? Lots of potential for fun with numbers here- especially using one cut piece laid on top of a solid piece and showing what 1/2, 1/4 and 1/8 look like! Visual, hands on math is an excellent way to bolster fluency!

Next we discussed whether we wanted to count up or count down- as in were we going to make the whole chain and remove a link each day, or were we going to make one link and then add a new one each day until the stack of paper was gone? These seemingly little “choose your own adventure” moments are incredible for fostering decision making and even leadership skills. It’s so important to give kids the reigns and let them make decisions to develop grit and confidence in independent thinking. Both voted to create the entire chain and remove a link each day.

We folded the paper and cut the strips- if you have younger kiddos, this is EXCELLENT practice- and bonus, did you know cutting with scissors also helps develop handwriting muscles? YAY! Of course you can always pre-cut the link-strips and just have the kids do some cutting practice for fun.

Before we wrote a number on each strip, we looked at the holidays/special events that will happen between today and June 20th and numbered those: “last day of school”, “grandpa’s birthday”, other birthdays etc. Then we used the calendar to assign a number to each day between May 20th and June 20th and we numbered each strip. We numbered the strips, pulled the strips that were special days and labeled them, and did some decorating. Then it was time to make our chain! We used a few “practice strips” to chose best closure- tape, staples, glue stick or glue- staples won. The kids assembled their chains and we hung them up in the kitchen! Tomorrow we’ll remove the first chain and re-cap the lesson. There is a Stonehenge art project in our near future as well- stay tuned for that!

Here are some additional instructional resources:

Brain Pop Video & Lesson Ideas

InfoPlease article on “Understanding Summer Solstice”

Enjoy the countdown/count-up to the Solstice and make sure you download the free Summer Solstice Activity Book too!