Moon Activities

The first week back after a break is always hard interesting. To make the transition easier I chose some hands on science activities to fit in with our space theme.

Last week was all about the Moon so I had to review craters for Rose when she asked 'why has the Moon got spots?'

We started with a bowl of flour then put a cling film atmosphere across the top,

when she threw the meteors in they didn't get to the surface because it was protected - I quickly explained that Earth is protected by our atmosphere and the meteors generally get burned up by the atmosphere.

Next we removed the 'atmosphere' because the Moon doesn't have one, threw our meteors and observed the crater 'spots' it made.

We recapped how they used the Moon to discover the Earth was round.

Then did a Moon cycle presentation. It started with an orange...

... we held up to the light to show how the side away from the light was in shadow.

We placed our globe (Earth) in the middle of the table and drew a circle around in chalk to show the Moons orbit, placed our Sun in position

then we were ready to introduce all the phases - the New Moon (when the Moon is between the Earth and Sun) appears as a dark circle because all we see the shadow half.

The first quarter etc.

Next we memorised our terms - Waxing, when the lit area of the moon is growing smaller. Waning, when the lit area of the moon is growing larger. Gibbous, when more than quarter of the moon is lit. Crescent, when less than half of the moon is lit. A good rule is Waxing is the right side and Waning is the left.

Then the older three did a write up

while Rose coloured in and worked on a phases puzzle.

She finished by playing 'match the phase' with Tulip.