Design a Sun Shelter — Build & Test — K-PS3 Unit 2, Lesson 6

Students will build and test ideas for "Design a Sun Shelter" — Part 2: Build & Test, make observations during the activity, and explain their choices using evidence from the lesson.

🎯 The Big Idea

Scientists and engineers don't just plan — they build, test, and improve! Today, students take their Lesson 5 design plans and bring them to life. After building, they test whether their shelter really does reduce the warming effect of sunlight. Then comes the most important engineering step: iteration — looking at what worked and what didn't, and thinking about how to improve the design.

🔧 Engineering Design Process (Today's Steps)

✅ Ask — done in Lesson 5: "How can we keep something cool in the sun?"
✅ Imagine & Plan — done in Lesson 5
🔨 Create — today! Build the shelter from your plan
🧪 Test — today! Does it reduce warming? Measure the difference
🔄 Improve — today! What would you change? This is iteration!

📦 Materials

🏗️ Building Materials

Cardboard scraps (cereal boxes, shipping boxes)
White paper and colored paper
Aluminum foil
Fabric scraps
Tape (masking or clear)
Scissors

🧪 Testing Materials

2 identical pieces of dark paper (for testing surfaces)
A sunny spot outdoors or near a bright window
A small toy animal (to be the "resident" of the shelter)
Timer (5 minutes)
Student worksheet (included)

🔬 Let's Get Started

Step 2 — Build! (15–20 min)
Construct the shelter from your materials. Encourage kids to think as they build:

"Is the toy animal completely in the shade under your shelter?"
"Is the outside light-colored or reflective?"
"Does it stand up on its own?"

Help with cutting and taping as needed. The goal is a freestanding structure that covers the toy animal.

Step 3 — Set Up the Test (5 min)
The test is a fair comparison:

Place dark paper #1 in direct sunlight with no shelter
Place dark paper #2 in the same sunny spot, but under the shelter
Make sure both papers start at the same room temperature
Start the timer for 5 minutes

Predict: "Will the paper under the shelter be cooler than the one without a shelter?"

💬 Discussion Question (Unit Wrap-Up)

🗣️ "You designed a shelter to reduce warming. What are some ways humans design buildings and cities to stay cooler?"

→ White or light-colored roofs that reflect sunlight instead of absorbing it. Shade trees planted strategically to block direct sun. Green roofs covered in plants that use sunlight for photosynthesis and cool through evaporation. Underground or earth-sheltered homes that use the earth's stable temperature as insulation. Thick walls (good thermal mass) that slow heat from entering during the day. Small windows on the sunny south side. Ancient desert civilizations — in Egypt, the Middle East, and Southwest US — figured all of this out thousands of years ago! Their buildings were marvels of passive cooling design.

🚀 Extensions

🔄 Second Iteration: Using what you learned from the test, redesign and rebuild the shelter. Is Version 2 better? Measure both!
🏆 Shelter Competition: If you have siblings, each builds their own shelter. Test all shelters side by side. Whose kept the coolest? Why?
🌍 Architecture Tour: Walk around your neighborhood or look online. Find buildings with features designed to stay cool — light roofs, shade overhangs, lots of trees nearby, etc.
🌿 Green Roof Project: Try adding small leaves or strips of grass to your shelter roof. Does it change the temperature underneath?

👩‍🏫 Parent/Teacher Notes

It's okay if it doesn't work perfectly: In fact, that's ideal! The evaluation and iteration step is the most important engineering learning. "It didn't work well because the roof had a gap" is excellent science thinking.
Foil works especially well: If students used foil on their shelter, they'll often see a clear temperature difference. Cardboard alone works less dramatically but still shows some effect.
Fair testing: The two dark papers should be in the same sunny spot with the same exposure, differing only in whether the shelter covers them. This teaches controlled experiments.
Iteration is the key concept: Real engineering is always iterative. Celebrate "failures" as learning data. Every test that doesn't work tells you something useful — engineers call this "iterating toward a solution."
Unit completion: After 6 lessons, students should be able to describe how sunlight warms Earth's surfaces, explain why some surfaces warm faster than others, and describe how to design a structure to reduce warming. That's K-PS3-1 and K-PS3-2 complete!

🌟 Unit 2 Wrap-Up — Sunshine & Warmth

🏆

You Completed Kindergarten Physical Science Unit 2!

In this unit, you learned:

☀️ Sunlight travels from the sun to Earth and warms surfaces it hits
🖤 Dark surfaces absorb more sunlight and warm faster than light surfaces
🌑 Shadow length shows us how directly sunlight hits an area — short shadows = direct rays = more warming
🌍 Different Earth surfaces (soil, sand, water) warm at different rates
🧊 Sunlight can cause ice to melt faster, especially on dark surfaces in direct sun
🏗️ We can design and build structures to reduce warming — using light colors, reflective materials, and shade

NGSS Standards Covered:

✅ K-PS3-1 — Make observations to determine the effect of sunlight on Earth's surface (Lessons 1–4)
✅ K-PS3-2 — Use tools and materials to design and build a structure that will reduce the warming effect of sunlight (Lessons 5–6)

⭐ Scientists observe, compare, predict, and test. That's exactly what you did! ⭐

🧠 Ready to test your knowledge?

☀️ Take the Unit 2 Quiz! →

🏗️ Student Worksheet

Name: ________________________________ Date: ________________

🔨 My Shelter — Draw what you built:

Draw your finished shelter here

🧪 The Test — Circle what you found:

☀️ Dark paper without shelter

After 5 minutes it felt:

❄️ Cool 😐 Warm 🔥 Hot

(circle one)

🏠 Dark paper under shelter

After 5 minutes it felt:

❄️ Cool 😐 Warm 🔥 Hot

(circle one)

✅ Did my shelter work?

Circle one: YES, it kept things cooler! | NO, same temperature | A little bit

🔄 If I built it again, I would change...

⭐ The most important thing I learned in this unit:

🔑 PARENT/TEACHER ANSWER KEY & UNIT ASSESSMENT

Expected Test Results

The dark paper without a shelter will feel noticeably warm or hot after 5 min in direct sun
The dark paper under a well-built shelter should feel cooler — especially if the shelter uses foil or white paper on outside
The difference may be subtle or dramatic depending on shelter design and sun intensity

Iteration Prompts — Common Issues and Fixes

Problem	What to Try Next Time
Shelter collapsed	Add tape to corners, make wider base, use sturdier cardboard
Gaps in roof/walls let sun through	Cover all gaps with tape or extra material — total shade is the goal
Dark material used on outside	Flip to light-colored side out, or add foil covering on exterior
Shelter too small for toy	Extend walls, make a wider roof, or use a larger toy next time

💡 Unit Summary: K-PS3 Concepts Demonstrated

Lesson	Key Concept	NGSS
L1: Sun Warms Everything	Dark absorbs more; wet cools by evaporation	K-PS3-1
L2: Shadow Science	Sun angle determines warming intensity	K-PS3-1
L3: Dark vs Light Surfaces	Earth surfaces warm at different rates; urban heat islands	K-PS3-1
L4: Melting Race	Sunlight causes melting; surface color and shade matter; albedo	K-PS3-1
L5: Design a Shelter (Plan)	Engineering design process: ask, imagine, plan	K-PS3-2
L6: Build & Test	Create, test, evaluate, iterate	K-PS3-2

✅ Unit Completion Checklist

☐ Child can explain that sunlight warms Earth's surfaces
☐ Child can say why dark surfaces warm faster than light ones
☐ Child can connect shadow length to direct vs. angled sunlight
☐ Child can rank soil, sand, and water by how fast they warm in sunlight
☐ Child built a structure designed to reduce warming and can evaluate whether it worked
☐ Child can suggest at least one improvement to their design (iteration)

🏗️ Design a Sun Shelter — Part 2: Build & Test! 🏗️

🎯 Learning Objective