ANCHOR PHENOMENON: 

Polynesian Navigation

Essential Question: 

How did the Polynesians use observations of the Sun, stars, and the Moon to navigate from island to island?

SUPPORTING YOUR YOUNG SCIENTIST AT HOME

ONGOING CONVERSATIONS

Support science learning at home by having conversations about sound. Here are some suggestions to

get you started:

▪ Point out familiar places or areas that are north, east, south, and west of your home.

▪ Observe the day sky at different times and discuss how the Sun appears to move across the sky.

▪ Observe the night sky at different times and discuss how the Moon and stars appear to move

across the sky.

▪ Point out how daytime length changes throughout the year by discussing sunrise and sunset

times relative to daily activities that occur at the same time, such as eating dinner, waking up, or

going to sleep.

ACTIVITIES

These activities support and extend classroom learning:

▪ Encourage your student to use drawings, words, or photographs to record the path of a star or

the Moon in a night sky journal.

▪ If you travel with your student, compare observations of the night sky from distant locations.

▪ Play a game with your student in which you take turns using the cardinal directions (i.e., north,

east, south, and west) to direct each other to different rooms in your home.

1-PS4 Waves and Their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer

1-PS4-1 Plan and conduct investigations to provide evidence that vibrating materials can make sound and that sound can make materials vibrate.

1-PS4-4 Use tools and materials to design and build a device that uses light or sound to solve the problem of communicating over a distance.

K–2-ETS1 Engineering Design

K–2-ETS1-2 Develop a simple sketch, drawing, or physical model to illustrate how the shape of an object helps it function as needed to solve a given problem.

K–2-ETS1-3 Analyze data from tests of two objects designed to solve the same problem to compare the strengths and weaknesses of how each performs.