Exploring the Moon's Characteristics

We've just completed a really fun unit - as you saw in my community sharing post, we've just wrapped up our space unit. As a teacher, some of the *best* weeks/months in the classroom are times when I'm able to integrate all our learning together into one integrated unit. Thanks gosh for inspiration late in the evening one Saturday night. {You know those nights you lay in bed, and can't shut off your brain?} Moon misconceptions!

I set it up with my kids by telling them something horrible happened! We were attacked by an awful moon monster, spreading TEN vicious rumors about the moon - things like, "The moon is made of cheese,"  "There is a man in the moon," "The moon changes shape in the sky." Can you believe it? They are precious, and love play-acting like this. 

Lucky for us we had several non-fiction reading articles, math measurement experiments, and science experiments to help us fight this ruthless rumor-mongerer.  ;)  Two of the activities we did were "the man in the moon" article reading and math craftivity to prove there's nobody living there and a "moon bounce" experiment to prove the gravity on the moon ...

We also did some pretty fun other things -- read other non-fiction articles, completed experiments, even made our own sweet moon model treat!

Moon experiment to explore phases of the moon. 

Ebbinghaus illusion - the reason the moon looks bigger than the stars around it.

Ingredients set up for our creation of our very own moon model made from crispy rice treats. :)  

Completed moon layers! YUM! 

It was a smashing success, and something I'm pretty excited to continue when we learn about energy and forces in motion this upcoming week. I guess there's always a chance this rumor monster could return ... ;)

If you're interested in completing the man in the moon and moon bouncing activity with your kids, you can find them here at my TpT store,  but the best deal is the full "moon misconceptions" unit that includes those two activities, plus our fact and fiction pre- and post- test sort, along with all the correlating activities to dispel the TEN rumors that horrible moon monster put into the world {it's a huge unit - 60 pages full of moon fun!!}.

Happy learning!