Earth spins on an axis that leans about 23.4 degrees. In December the southern half of Earth leans towards the sun, so the sun climbs high in the sky, days are long and shadows are short. The December solstice, at 7:50 a.m. on 22 December 2026 in Sydney and Melbourne (9:50 a.m. in New Zealand), is the moment the South Pole leans closest to the sun: the longest day of the year in the south and the shortest in the north, where it is winter. After it, southern days slowly grow shorter until the June solstice. The sunrise and sunset times in this pack are real, worked out with NOAA's solar calculator equations and checked against the US Naval Observatory.
Six pages. Page 1 gives the sunrise and sunset in six cities on 22 December: find the time from sunrise to midday, from midday to sunset, and add them, turning 60 minutes into an hour where needed. Page 2 rounds the daylight in six more cities to the nearest half hour and makes a bar graph of it. Page 3 is a year of daylight in Hobart, on the 21st of each month: plot it as a line graph and find the longest and shortest months and the two months with 12 hours. Page 4 shows the tilted Earth in December and compares five cities, south and north, on the December and June solstices. Page 5 shows a metre ruler's midday shadow in Sydney in December and in June, drawn to scale, then compares six cities' shadows: write each June shadow in metres and centimetres and find how much longer it is than in December. Page 6 is six word problems. The first row or problem on pages 1, 2, 3 and 5 is worked as an example.
Before page 1, look up today's sunrise and sunset for your town and work out the daylight together on a time line, as in the example. Before page 4, shine a torch on a tilted globe or ball in a dark room and turn it to see why the south gets more light in December. For page 5, stand a metre ruler up outside at midday on a sunny day and measure its shadow, then try again in winter.
Write down the sunrise and sunset times from a weather app for a week around 22 December and find the daylight each day. Is it getting longer or shorter? On a sunny day, measure a shadow at midday now and again in winter.
This pack supports the following Common Core State Standards for Mathematics:
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The longest day of the year in Australia and New Zealand, with real sunrise and sunset times from cities across both countries. Students work out hours of daylight across midday, round and graph them, follow a year of daylight on a line graph, compare the south and the north and read midday shadows in centimetres and metres.
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