I can't make an actual picture, but here's a diagram you can sketch for her — and it's the *one* picture that makes it click:

```
                        ☀  the Sun
                          •

        N                          N
       /                          /
      ●                          ●
     /                          /
    S                          S

  JUNE: top half leans        DECEMBER: top half
  INTO the light  → summer    leans AWAY → winter
  (for us in the north)       (for us in the north)
```

The whole trick is in that slanted line through the Earth: **our axis stays tilted the same way all year** (it always points at the North Star). So in June the top half tips toward the Sun, and six months later we're on the other side of the Sun, still tipped the *same* way — which now means away from it.

**Why leaning matters** — two things, both easy to show:

1. **Slanted light is weak light.** Dark room, flashlight, a ball (or an apple). Shine it straight at the ball: small, bright, hot circle. Aim it at a slant: the same light spreads into a big dim oval. That's exactly what winter sunlight does.
2. **Slanted light = short days.** Less time each day for the Sun to warm things up.

**The trap to warn her about:** it's *not* that we're farther from the Sun in winter. We're actually closest to the Sun in early January! And the check she can do herself: when it's summer here, it's winter in Australia — same Sun, same day, opposite lean.

If she wants to *make* the picture: stick a pencil through an apple as the axis, tilt it, and walk the apple around a lamp without letting the pencil wobble. She'll see the lit half change all by herself.

Want me to write this as a one-page version she can read herself, or as a note she could take to class?