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Oh that first day of Fall

10:12 AM, 2007-Sep-21 .. Posted in Homeschooling .. 0 comments .. Link
Today’s TOS Friday Freebies email got me to thinking about the first official day of Autumn. I too thought the first official day of each season just automatically fell on the 21st of that particular month- until last year. It was our first year of homeschooling and we decided to look deeper into why that specific day was the first “official” day . . . .

So we learned about the Autumnal Equinox- which is the first fall day that night and day are of equal length. So that lead to a math lesson on how many hours are in a day and what the equal length would be. We learned that the first day of spring is the Vernal Equinox and this happens in the month of March. On the Equinox night and day are of [nearly] equal length on all latitudes. The equinox do not fall on the same days each year because a year is approximately 365 days- actually 365.25- which leads to why we have leap year and gain an extra day.
This led to the question “What about the first day of summer and winter?”
These dates are the solstices. The solstice is when the sun is the furthest away from the equator. Summer Solstice is when the sun is the furthest north of the equator and winter is when the sun is furthest south.
And I have since learned that this is called a rabbit trail- when one question leads to an answer that leads to another question and so on and so forth. I have also learned to limit the amount of rabbit trails during school time. I find it easiest to keep a stack of index cards beside me and write down questions for researching later in the day or on the weekend so that we keep on track with our schedule.
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