Day and Night

Elisabeth Lawson
Preschool 2 Age 4-5 Studying Science

Common Core Standards:

Earth and Space Sciences for Early Childhood
The Universe
1. Begin to use terms such as night and day, sun and moon to describe personal observations.
2. Observe and represent the pattern of day and night through play, art materials or conversation.

Lesson Summary:
For this lesson, we are going to discuss the terms night and day. We will discuss what the night
time looks like. We will discuss what the daytime looks like. We will learn about the sun and
the moon. We will discuss what activities occur during the day and what activities occur at
night.
Estimated Duration:
This lesson will take approximately 120 minutes. I will break this time down into several
different smaller sections since we are working with such a young age group with shorter
attention span.
Commentary:
Due to the age group that I am teaching, I will keep my lessons short. I will complete this
lesson in five days in a row with each learning session lasting 20-30 minutes. I do not
anticipate any issues with the children paying attention because the lessons are short. I will
incorporate two different books into the lesson plan as well. The first book I will use is titled
Day and Night by Teddy Newton. It is a Disney/Pixar book and has a short film that goes
along with it. The second book I will use is Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. There
is also a short film to accompany this book. There are also games and worksheets to go along
with this.
The technology we will be using first is our SMART Board. The SMART Board is an
interactive chalkboard which allows our teachers to display pictures, write and erase on the

screen, display lessons and play videos. The SMART Board is displayed at the front of the
classroom. I will use the SMART Board to play the animations off of YouTube for the children
to watch.
Instructional Procedures:

Day 1:
We will begin with a story time for the children where we will read the book Day and Night.
After reading the book, we will have a group discussion about the differences between daytime
and nighttime. For the next ten minutes, the class will sit down and watch a video on our
SMART Board. We will watch a video made by PIXAR that goes with their book Day and
Night. The video is beautifully animated and has a musical score to it that the children will
enjoy.
https://youtu.be/bi7ybKxymao
With reading the book and playing the short film, I believe this portion of the lesson will take
20-30 minutes.
Day 2:
Now that we have established what nighttime is and what daytime is, I would like for my
students to identify their favorite activities and when these favorite activities occur. I will begin
with story time with the book Goodnight Moon. I chose this book because it identifies what
objects and what activities is associated with the time of day it is. Then our classroom is going
to use Story bird to create a book titled Good Morning Sun. This will be my classrooms
sequel to the beloved childrens book. My children will help me chose what objects and people
we can say Good Morning too. I will also incorporate transportation in this portion of the
lesson plan. I would like the children to identify how they get to school, whether it is the bus,
walking to school or their parents dropping them off. I would like the children to identify who
they interact with in the morning. Good Morning Teacher, Good Morning Friends and so on
and so forth. This activity will take us less approximately 30 minutes.
Day 3:
We will begin with this lesson with our smart board again. We will continue with the same
book from the day before Goodnight Moon. This book comes with interactive worksheets. The
items in the book are on the worksheet. We will use the interactive worksheets to identify
which objects belong with the Goodnight activities. After the worksheet is completed together
on the smartboard, we will watch the animation of the book. This activity should take
approximately 20 minutes.

Day 4:
Today we will go on a scavenger hunt for the Sun. Since yesterday we focused on night time
activities, we will focus on daytime activities today. We will incorporate our weather panda
into this section of the lesson plan. Our weather panda is our weather forecaster for our
classroom. We will discuss how during the daytime when the Sun is out and it is daylight, what
activities do we participate in. We will discuss what todays weather is like. We will discuss
what you wear for the weather. I will then have the students go outside and see if they can
independently locate the sun in the sky. We will celebrate the location of the sun with a free
play recess on the playground. We will talk about how it is only appropriate to play outside
when it is daytime hours.
Day 5:
We will wrap up this lesson plan with artwork made by the children. We will break the
children down into two separate groups. The children assigned the nighttime group will
receive large pieces of black construction paper. They will paint a nighttime scene in glow in
the dark paints. These pictures will be displayed in the naptime area of the classroom. That
way when the lights are dimmed for night time, their pictures will glow in the dark. Myself
and my two student teachers assigned to that group will encourage the children to paint the
moon and stars and other objects related to night time. The daytime group will receive bright
yellow pieces of construction paper and will paint objects and activities associated with the
daytime. These pictures will be displayed in our classroom close to our window. This day, I
believe the activities will take the longest. I will allow at least 30 minutes for this activity. I
will also allow myself and the student teachers extra time to clean up and hang up the
childrens artwork.
Pre-Assessment:
For the pre-assessment, I will utilize the felt board in my classroom. The felt board is a large
easel that we use during circle time. We have several felt objects in a variety of colors and
shapes. I will use the night/day packets. For the night time we have the moon, stars, felt
pajamas, toothbrush, a bed, lamp and many more related nighttime related objects. For the day
time objects, we have the sun, different clothing pieces, a school house, and food objects.
My goal is to use the felt board along with group discussion to see what the children already
know about daytime and nighttime. I will use the Sun and the Moon as starting points to create
a column. I will pull out each object and ask the children does the object belong in the daytime
or in the night time. We will discuss the difference in activities that the children participate in
during the night time and during the day. We will discuss what the children do when they get
ready for bed and what they do when they wake up and get ready for school. We will also
discuss what items they use at both times. For example, their toothbrush could go in the

daytime column or the nighttime column.

Scoring Guidelines:
For the scoring guidelines for this project, I will have the student teachers observe me
teaching the lesson the first four days. I will create a checklist format for the student
teachers to fill out while observing the children. The checklist will identify if the
children participated during the lesson. Since the children are so young, they will not
receive a grade, we will just confirm that the children learned the lesson and met the
standards. If the student teacher finds a child in the classroom that they believe do not
understand the differences between night and day, we will do further one on one
instruction with the child. I will also ask that the student teachers document what the
children enjoyed most about this activity.

Post-Assessment:
For the post-assessment, my center keeps binders on each child in the classroom. The
binders have sections to go along with the common core standards and the state
guidelines of expectations for each childs age level. The assessment checklist
completed by the teachers for this activity will go in the student's assessment binder in
the common core standard section for Science. The binder is used as a screening and
assessment tool used to ensure each child is learning and developing along with the
expectations for their age level. It allows the teachers to modify their instruction if
necessary to accommodate the learner. The student teachers will display pictures of the
childs artwork in binder along with the checklist. The artwork will have teachers
comments on it which explain the activity and what the child learned. We will make
this information available to the parents to help them reflect on the activities that their
children participate in.

Scoring Guidelines:
The scoring for this lesson will simply be appropriate feedback from the teacher. The
children do not receive a score, the teacher simply evaluates if the child is meeting the
common core criteria and learning the lessons. The teachers screening and assessment
will evaluate the childrens strengths and weaknesses so we know how to target our
lessons. The follow up lessons will focus on the areas that the children shows
weaknesses in rather than giving the child a grade.

Differentiated Instructional Support

Students who are struggling with the material will receive one on one instruction with the
student teacher. We will use our desktop computers to complete interactive worksheets on the
day and night concepts. The student teacher will do another assessment on the child after the
extra instruction is completed. This process will continue until the child has a comprehensive
understanding of the material.
For a student that has displayed a clear mastery of the concepts will be presented with an
opportunity to further advance. For the further instruction, we will create a small group of
accelerated children. These children will further their lesson with keeping the focus on the
learning the common core standards of science. We will discuss what time of day the children
think plants and flowers like most and why. We will also discuss what time of day we eat and
what meals we have. We will find out if any of the children eat night time snacks or have warm
milk to help them fall asleep.
Extension
The link that I would advise parents to go to with their children to help them learn more about
this lesson and the standards that it is addressing is:
http://rec.ohiorc.org/record/9652.aspx
This link will lead them to the REC website which is an online resource for early childhood
learning. This link will lead the parents directly to the record which this day and night lesson
plan was derived from. There are also links there that will further explain the common core
standards that this lesson addresses. There are suggested readings and activities that students
and parents can complete at home.

Homework Options and Home Connections

The only homework assigned to the preschool children during this lesson will be on Day 4. On
that day, we completed the Goodnight Moon and Good Morning Sun portion of the lesson.
Teachers will encourage the students to say Goodnight and Good Morning to inanimate objects
that are related to that time of day. We will not assess this portion of the homework due to the
age of the children. We will simply inform the parents what the children are asked to do, so
they are aware when the children start saying Goodnight to their toothbrush and Good
Morning to their bowl of cereal that it is an extension to what they are learning in class. We
will ask the parents to encourage this and play along with them for this homework assignment.

Interdisciplinary Connections
This lesson plan integrated with in it two other content areas which helped to strengthen the

students learning. The language and literacy development was integrated a lot in the first four
days of the lesson. This lesson included a childhood classic award winning book Goodnight
Moon and a newer excellently illustrated Pixar created book Day and Night. A perfect mix of a
childhood classic and newer literature. On Day 3, the children even created their own book
with use of online technology www.storybird.com to create Good Morning Sun. The children
used expressive language to describe their experiences throughout the day.
The second content area that was used in this lesson plan was physical well-being and motor
development. During the group discussion of day and nighttime activities we discussed things
like brushing your teeth and getting enough sleep throughout the night to do well during the
day. Day 4 included motor development during the free play on the playground, when the
children went outside to locate the sun.
Materials and Resources:
For
teachers

SMART Board, Felt Board and Felt Objects, Desk Top Computer, Day and
Night book, Good Night Moon book

For
students

SMART Board, Desk Top Computer, Glow in the Dark Paints, Black
Construction Paper, Regular Paints, Yellow Construction Paper, Easel, Paint
Brushes

Key Vocabulary
Dusk, Dawn, Routine
Additional Notes
As an added activity, teachers can allow the children to bring in pajamas and a teddy bear from
home. At naptime we can pretend it is night time and serve cookies and warm milk and read
books.