Oh, no! The Orloj, that ornate, fancy clock in Prague shut down for repairs. How will the townspeople tell time? We’re being silly, of course. Today, there’s a watch, clock, or phone everywhere you look. But wouldn’t it be fun to pretend there wasn’t? Wouldn’t it be fun to pretend you had to go “old school” to keep track of time?

Make a Sundial

Grab your sunglasses! With a paper plate, a ruler, two pencils, and a few stones or nails, you can make your own sundial. But first—check outside. Is it a sunny day? If so, you’re ready to go!

Lay the plate on a table with the eating surface facing down. Find the precise center and mark it. Then stab through the mark with your pencil, creating a small hole.

Draw a 12 at the top of your plate. The 12 shouldn’t be at the very edge. Write it on the round “face” of the plate before it slopes down toward the table. Use your ruler to create a straight line between the 12 and the hole in the center of the plate.

A few minutes before noon, go outside. Take a watch or phone. Lay the sundial on the ground in a bright spot. Poke one of the pencils through the hole in the center of the plate. At exactly noon, line up the shadow the pencil creates with the line you drew on the plate. This will require you to slant the pencil toward the 12. Tack the plate down with nails or weigh it down with stones so it won’t move.

Every hour exactly on the hour while it is light outside, check your sundial. Write the time on your sundial in the shadow the pencil creates. In a couple days, you will have a completed sundial.

Your sundial will work just like sundials worked thousands of years ago. That’s because God created the Earth as part of a system He ordered perfectly. We can trust that the Sun will rise every day and set every evening.

God created the Solar System in a way that allows us to read the time of day on a sundial. But creation still obeys the Creator. Isaiah 38:8 says, “Behold, I will make the shadow cast by the declining Sun on the dial of Ahaz turn back ten steps.”