Phases of the Moon Activity

Phases of the Moon Activity

The idea today is to reinforce the previous discussions of day/night and seasons, and use the ideas we have showed them so far to introduce the phases of the Moon. We will want to arrange the classroom so that the Sun (our naked bulb) can be in the center today.

·  Start by reviewing the stuff from previous weeks: remembering how the positions of Sun and Earth determine day and night is useful both for the analogy to how the Moon shines and to understand why we see it at different times. Give them a few minutes to ask questions about past material; stop this before the questions degenerate to complete irrelevance…

·  Now start talking about the Moon. Ask them – what does the Moon look like? Summarize the discussion by pointing out it seems to change shape.

·  Next question: What is the Moon made of? Ignore the cheese joke and get to rock. So how does a chunk of rock change shape? Summarize – Moon does not change shape but it looks as if it does. Today we’ll figure out how this works.

·  Actually, how does a chunk of rock shine so brightly that we can see it? Let them get to the fact that the Sun shines on the Moon, making it look bright in the sky.

·  The point: the Moon is a ball of rock, which shines because Sun lights it up. The directions from Sun and Earth to Moon make it seem to change shape in the sky. Remind them how, when Sun shines on Earth, it is light (daytime) on half of Earth, and dark on the other half. So it is on the Moon, Sun can only make one half shine, the other is dark.

·  Take a Moon globe (I will try to make sure one is in the classroom), turn lights out and Sun on, and try to get them to see that this “Moon” is “shining” in light from the “Sun.”

·  Now, have each kid take a Styrofoam ball “moon” and arrange them in a circle around the Sun (so nobody eclipses their friend). Explain that in this demo, their head will be playing the role of Earth and the little ball the role of Moon, with the bulb being Sun as usual. Show them how to turn, holding moon at arm’s length, and watch the phases appear. This is a very powerful and visible demo. Have them do this for a few minutes for themselves, then call out commands and see if they can all do “full moon”, “half (or quarter – whatever you have called it to them) moon”, “banana (C?) moon”, etc. The idea is that they should be able to see the shape of the Moon and move themselves until they see the shape you asked for. Keep this going for a few minutes and move around to see they really did get it. May want to show them how smaller phase happens when Moon is near Sun in the sky.

·  Someone will make an eclipse, inadvertently, while doing this, and they may ask what happened. Tell them this is cool, we’ll talk about it next week, but for now show them how holding Moon a bit higher to keep it out of shadow of their heads will eliminate the problem.

·  Sit them back down to do the worksheet.