Long summer days and the clouds only appear now and again. The perfect opportunity to build an outdoor clock without any electricity or batteries. Attention little explorers! Because we're making a sundial to match the season. Here we have found out for you how to read the clock with the help of the sun. A particularly exciting first step for children to read the analogue clock with a sundial - don't you think? It's also something different for parents who have already soaked up enough vitamin D in the outdoor pool or sandpit thanks to their children.

How does the sundial "tick"?

The sundial shows the time of day with the help of the shadow cast by the sunlight on the dial. The shadow emitter, the so-called pole rod, is a wooden skewer in our small model. But why can we tell what time it is from a shadow? It's as simple as this: the earth rotates on its own axis in one day, i.e. in 24 hours - perhaps explain it to your children with a simple rotation on its own axis, as the term 'axis' might not be so enlightening for the children. This means that as the earth rotates during the day, the shadow cast by the sunlight changes. And it was precisely this principle that people used many thousands of years ago to know what time it was - as long as the sun was shining, of course.

Craft instructions for our sundial

But if the children experiment and make the sundial themselves, they will understand the principle much better. That's why we've put together very simple craft instructions for little researchers and craft enthusiasts below! Everything you need to make the sundial:

• our sundial template - you can download it for free using the form below
• an IKEA HEAT trivet*
• a wooden skewer, e.g. a shashlik skewer
• a pair of scissors

DIY sundial for children

Now you can place the self-made sundial outside and observe the time. Choose a particularly sunny day, because the fewer clouds there are in the sky, the better you can observe the shadows falling on the dial. Maybe you can even film the sundial you've made for a few hours and watch the accelerated long-term recording later. The children will love seeing how the experiment they've made works!

Even more craft ideas for learning through play

If you like the sundial and would like to make more, you can find more craft templates to print out here. Why not take a look at Pinterest too! We've put together lots of boards on different topics for you there.

* All links marked with an asterisk are advertising links that refer to the IKEA website or to pages of other advertising partners.