|
Lesson Plans
I Wonder: Writing Scientific Explanations With Students
Capitalize on your students’ curiosity about the science of Leap Day. This K -2 lesson takes advantage of students’ natural inquisitiveness, encouraging them to research a scientific question and write an answer. Students will learn to research, sort and classify information, and collaborate to write a class scientific explanation.
Weather Detectives: Questioning the Fact and Folklore of Weather Sayings
Weather events, like astrological occurrences, were hard to explain or predict without modern science. By encouraging students to adopt a skeptical stance toward common traditional weather sayings, this 3-5 lesson invites students to become weather detectives who ask “Why?” and “Why not?” as they investigate the history and validity of the sayings then share their results with their classmates.
Astronomy Poetry: Combining Poetry With the Content Areas
In this 6-8 lesson, students listen to and discuss poetry that pertains to the study of astronomy and write their own poems to enhance their learning of the subject. As a final project, students use the ReadWriteThink Printing Press to compose original poetry books about astronomy.
|
 |
Web Links
The Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies
This online zine honors the small percentage of people who are "Leapers;" that is, people who were born on a Leap Day. The site also provides statistics about Leap Day births, points out data reporting problems people with Leap Day birthdays face, and discusses the history of Leap Day.
The Year of Confusion
This online story from Highlights Kids is an engaging account of the time leading up to the revision of the calendar to include Leap Day.
Star Child: A Learning Center for Young Astronomers
Intended for grade-school-level students, this NASA website recommended by SchoolZone has information about astronomy as well as projects, lesson ideas, and resources for the classroom.
Astronomy Picture of the Day: Julius Caesar and Leap Days
This site from NASA, focusing on an image of a coin minted with Julius Caesar’s likeness, provides a brief explanation of the origins of Leap Day. The site also references Sosigenes, the astronomer who consulted with Caesar on the calendar and invention of Leap Day.
|
|
Texts
Frasier, Debra. 1991. On the Day You Were Born. Harcourt.
Younger students are always curious about what happens to people whose birthdays fall on Leap Day. Use this classic book to discuss how the natural world gets ready for children born on February 29 just as it does for anyone else.
Winfrey, Michelle Whitaker. 2007. It’s My Birthday...Finally: A Leap Day Story. Hobby House.
In this book for intermediate readers, Miles approaches his birthday (February 29) with confusion about whether he is really turning eight or only two.
Mass, Wendy. 2004. Leap Day. Little Brown & Company.
This young-adult novel centers on a girl born on Leap Day. The story of her fourth (actually sixteenth) birthday is told from the girl’s point of view but has additional subchapters that tell what other characters are thinking and experiencing as well.
Nevins, Francis M. 2003. Leap Day and Other Stories. Five Star.
This engaging collection of fourteen short mystery/thriller tales is by an award-winning author of mysteries and nonfiction. Each short story, some comparable in style to those by classic authors Ellery Queen and Raymond Chandler, was orignially published in a major magazine.
|
February 29, 2008
Our solar year is 365.24219 days. Since our calendar does not deal in partial days, every four years, we add an additional day to February. Therefore, our calendar year is either 365 days in nonleap years or 366 days in leap years. A leap year every four years gives us 365.25 days, sending our seasons off course and eventually in the wrong months. To change .25 days to .24219, we skip a few Leap Days every one hundred years or so. 
