Take the class outside three times during one school day to measure the shadow cast by one specific tree in the school yard, if applicable. Use a tape measure or another means of nontraditional measurement such as asking students to lay down on the grass. A tree shadow in the morning may measure three preschool students long and decrease when the sun is high in the sky between the hours of noon and 2 o'clock. Before the students leave for the day, measure the shadow again, which may be on the other side of the tree. Discuss why the shadows are different -- the moving of the planet -- in a manner that preschoolers would understand.
Using brown, green and gray construction paper, students can replicate a tree and its shadow through an arts-and-crafts activity. The teacher may develop tree trunk, treetop and tree shadow templates and instruct the students to trace and cut out them out. Each child pastes the paper trees onto a piece of larger construction paper in the order that reveals the tree and its shadow. Adapt the activity to children to may not be avid paper cutters by drawing and coloring the tree and its shadow.
Children can create a tree shadow book from two piece of paper folded widthwise together and stapled at the seam. When studying a tree's shadow at various times throughout the day, students record their observations via colored pictures; one on each page. Students dictate captions for their drawn work to the teacher who writes them under each image, describing the shadows cast by the tree. This reinforcement tool reminds the students about how shadows change by the planet's movement. The students may also make a book and dictate its text related to a fictional tree and its feelings of fear or excitement toward its shadow.
Introductory experiments related to trees and shadows can be conducted by preschool children to increase comprehension of the subject matter. As a supplemental activity, students create birdhouses, tree decorations and wind chimes and hang them from the schoolyard tree. Create a hypothesis with the students on whether or not the added tree decor will create a shadow as well. Adapt the activity and instruct children to hold on to the tree and move their bodies in crazy poses to create more shadows with the tree.