Decoupaged Garden Pot Sundial

I am so excited to welcome Mary Kate, a blogger from Christianity Cove, to three kids and a fish! She has come up with a great project for kids to create with an amazing life lesson! This decoupaged garden pot sundial is a great way to do a fun activity with your kids and is an awesome addition to your yard or garden! I know we have our supplies ready to go to create this!

Decoupaged Garden Pot Sundial: A Fun Craft AND Science Experiment!

This sundial, made from a garden pot, will not only function well in the garden but it will teach children a great lesson about God. He’s like planet earth. We can’t always feel him moving, but we can see the evidence of it—if we pay attention!

Material

• Small or medium clay pot
• Clay
• Scissors
• Stick glue
• Decoupage glue (can be bought at any craft store; pronounced DECK-youpaj.)
• Paint brushes, fat, one for each child
• Discarded magazines or garden books with flowers in them.
• Sand and small glass or decorative stones
• Marker pens
• Flashlight

Instruction

Have children follow these directions to decorate their garden pots:
1. Cut out pictures of flowers or garden items from magazines that are small enough to fit on the sides of the clay pot.
2. Using stick glue, fix cutouts to clay pots to make a sort of collage. Do not cover the bottom.
3. Paint over the decorations with a thin layer of decoupage, which will reinforce the stickiness. Decoupage takes about 8 hours to dry completely, but fortunately it is not messy or very sticky. Children can carefully continue their creations as follows.

To make the sundial: 

4. Turn the pot face upward. Place a glob of clay in the bottom of the pot directly under the hole. Turn the pot over again and push the dowel rod or pencil through the hole so that it sticks into the glob of clay. That will hold the stick in place.
5. Fill the pot with sand a little more than ¾ full, and then add a layer of glass stones on top of the sand.
6. Using a waterproof marker, mark what you want to be the “noon” or top position of the pot with a dot.
7. Make a dot at the bottom of the circle in line with the top dot. That will be the 6:00 dot. Make a 3:00 dot and a 9:00 dot, then fill in the other numbers on the clock with the remaining 8 dots as evenly as possible (if desired).

If your children are longing to get out of doors, there is a way to demonstrate your sundial outside.


Testing the Sundial Outside

Take the sundial outside and have your children stand back so as not to create shadows on it. The “noon” dot should be facing directly north; however this may be hard to gauge unless you have a compass. (Don’t forget to take into account Daylight Savings Time difference if you set noon to due north by the compass. See below for further options.)

However, the dial can also be tested by checking the current time. Say it is 10:10.

Turn your Sundial so that the pencil would be an hour hand pointing to the ten.

Explain to your students that as the sun moves, the pencil would point to the 11 at 11:00 and to the 12 at noon. Instead of waiting for the sun to move, slowly turn the sundial counter clock wise, stopping at each hour and asking, “When the sun is here, it will be…what time?” and let them guess.

Demonstrating the sundial inside with a flashlight:

Darken the room as much as possible. The flashlight will be the “sun.” Have one person hold the “sun” and shine it directly at the bottom of the stick which is in the middle of the clock.

The person holding the flashlight will move slowly around the sundial, keeping the flashlight as steady as possible and always aimed at the bottom of the stick. As the “sun” moves around the dial, the shadow made by the stick will also move.

Explanation
Our sundial only demonstrates that the shadow from the stick changes as it moves around the sun. As the shadow changes, one can mark the time of day. But the earth not only revolves around the sun, it tilts as it revolves. The sundial we made does not reflect an exact measurement of time; it is only to illustrate how sunlight moves according to the hour of the day. Because of the way the earth orbits the sun, that shadow changes through the year.

Application
The sundial can be very useful to us. It can tell us when to come in from playing or help us figure out how long a certain game takes. It moves very slowly. We can’t really see it move. We can’t hear it; it doesn’t chime, and we can’t stop it from moving slowly forward. It’s a lot like God.

Next time we ask for God’s help, let’s remember not to expect to see the sky open up, or hear a loud answer, or especially to see our answer in a nanosecond. We have to watch for God’s steady movements in our lives. He moves like the hand on the sun dial. We need to have patience and believe that the waiting time for his answers will be over soon!