Little Sprouts Weekend: Week 5
Something is changing outside.
It happens gradually enough that we don’t always notice it at first.
The evenings arrive a little earlier. The mornings take a little longer to brighten. And the shadows stretching across the ground seem to be growing longer.
This week, we’re getting close to one of the great turning points of the year: the autumn equinox.
This weekend at a glance
Best for: Children aged 3–9
Time: 10–15 minutes, with an optional return visit later
You will need: A sunny outdoor space; a phone or small marker is optional
Where: A garden, footpath, park, playground or quiet space outside
Adult preparation: None
This weekend’s Little Sprouts adventure
Find somewhere outside where the sun is shining and you can see your shadow.
A garden is perfect. But a footpath, park, playground or quiet patch outside your home works just as well.
- Stand still for a moment and look down at your shadow.
- Notice how long it is and which direction it is pointing.
- Compare it with your own height.
- If you’d like, take a photograph or place a little marker at the top of the shadow.
- Come back an hour or two later, stand in roughly the same place and look again.
How long is your shadow?
Is it:
- shorter than you are?
- longer than you are?
- stretching behind you?
- sitting almost underneath you?
Has your shadow moved? Has it become longer or shorter?
That’s your little glimpse of Earth turning beneath the sunlight.
You don’t have to return later or complete the longer experiment. One shadow is enough.
One thing to remember
You never need to look directly at the Sun for this activity. In fact, don’t. Look at the shadow on the ground instead. That’s where all the interesting clues are.
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What is the autumn equinox?
The autumn equinox falls in late September each year, the moment when day and night are very nearly equal before the darker half of the year begins.
But you don’t need to understand astronomy to notice that something is changing. All you need is a patch of sunlight. And your shadow.
As Earth travels around the Sun, it is tilted slightly on its axis. That tilt is what gives us our changing seasons.
During summer here in Ireland, our part of Earth is tilted more towards the Sun. We have long days, short nights and the Sun climbs higher into the sky.
As autumn arrives, that begins to change. At the September equinox, the Sun crosses the equator from north to south and neither hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun more than the other.
It is often described as the time when day and night are equal. That’s almost true... but not quite. Because of the way sunrise and sunset are measured and because Earth’s atmosphere bends sunlight slightly, most places actually have a little more than twelve hours of daylight on the equinox itself.
For children, though, the important part is much simpler:
We are moving from the long, bright days of summer towards the shorter days of autumn and winter. And we can see that change happening.
Five thousand years of noticing this moment
People in Ireland have been paying attention to this moment of balance for thousands of years.
The passage tomb at Cairn T in Loughcrew, Co. Meath, one of Ireland’s oldest monuments, built over five thousand years ago, was constructed so that the equinox sunrise shines directly into the inner chamber and illuminates the carved stones inside.
The people who built it were watching the sky, watching the shadows and marking this exact moment of the year.
I have walked around that site. The cairns sit on open hilltops with views stretching across the midlands in every direction.
Standing there in September, you feel the same thing that must have been felt for millennia. That something is shifting, that the year is turning, that the light is different from what it was.
The shadow activity this weekend is a very small version of the same act of attention.
Why do our shadows change?
A shadow changes because the Sun appears to move across the sky during the day. When the Sun is higher, your shadow is shorter. When the Sun is lower, your shadow stretches further across the ground.
And there is another change happening across the seasons.
During summer, the Sun reaches higher into our sky. As we move through autumn and towards winter, it stays lower. That means those long morning and evening shadows become more noticeable.
So your shadow isn’t just showing you the time of day. At this time of year, it can also give you a little clue that the season is turning.
Can you remember your summer shadow?
Ask your child: do you remember what your shadow looked like in the middle of summer?
Perhaps you noticed it at the beach. Or running across the garden. Or walking home on a bright afternoon.
Would it have looked the same as it does now?
You don’t need the exact answer. The question is the interesting part. It encourages children to connect what they can see today with something that has been slowly changing for weeks.
A little experiment if you want to do more
If your child is interested, you can turn this into a tiny experiment.
Stand in the same place three times during the day:
- Morning
- Around lunchtime
- Later in the afternoon
Take a photograph of the shadow each time. Then put the photographs beside one another.
Which shadow is shortest? Which is longest? Which direction does it point?
You might discover that something which seemed completely ordinary at breakfast has changed dramatically by teatime.
But this part is entirely optional. One shadow is enough.
The balance of the year
The word equinox comes from Latin words meaning roughly equal night. And even though the real amount of daylight and darkness isn’t perfectly equal, the idea of balance is still a lovely way to think about this moment of the year.
We are standing between two very different parts of the year.
Behind us: long evenings, high summer sun and months when bedtime could arrive before darkness did.
Ahead of us: earlier sunsets, longer nights and the slow journey towards midwinter.
The change doesn’t happen in one dramatic moment. It happens a few minutes at a time. Which is perhaps why it’s so easy to miss.
Questions to wonder about together
There are no right or wrong answers. These are simply things to notice:
- Is your shadow longer or shorter than you?
- Which direction is it pointing?
- Has it moved since you last looked?
- Would it have looked the same in the middle of summer?
- Does the light feel different now than it did in summer?
One thing to notice before Sunday ends
Sometime this weekend, find your shadow. Stand still. Look at how far it stretches.
And ask:
Does the light feel different now than it did in summer?
That’s all. No equipment. Nothing to collect. Nothing to bring home.
Just one little clue that the year is turning.
Because sometimes the season changes so slowly that you have to stop to see it.
Little Sprouts Weekend
One story. One little adventure. One thing to notice before Sunday ends.
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Created for families with children aged 3–9. No garden or specialist knowledge required.
