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Having Fun While Learning About the Moon

By Melissa Markham on January 12, 2008 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday our nature group met. The topic of the day was the moon. One mom brought some crafts for the kids to do. These included making an earth and moon with stryofoam balls and then attaching the moon to the earth so that it could spin around the earth. The kids had a lot of fun with that. For the earth we started with a green styrofoam ball and then painted on the oceans and clouds and ice caps. Here is what Jack and Katrina's looked like:

Katrina's earth had quite a bit more cloud cover. Jack's earth had some lovely continents that actually resembled real ones! The kids really enjoyed this activity.

Then the first group came to me while another group started on making their earths and moons. My group learned a bit about the Geology of the moon. I had a book with some great photos that were taken by astronauts and it really gave them an idea of what the moon looked like.

We talked about craters and how they were formed. We discussed the fact that the moon has rock like the earth and that the theory is that the moon is actually a chunk of the earth. Then we got to the really fun stuff...making our own craters.

What? You want to make craters too? Well here's what you need...

A kitty litter pan (or something similar)
a 5 lb bag of flour
some cocoa powder or paint powder
rocks of about the same size
rocks or balls of different sizes
newspaper to help with the mess or better yet, do it outside

Place your kitty litter pan on top of the newspaper.
Fill it with flour.
level the flour.
Sprinkle some powder on top (for differentiation)
Stand back!

A couple of experiments you can do.

1. Have one child drop four rocks of different sizes from the same height (maybe even with his eyes). See if different size craters form. You will also see how the cocoa explodes off to the sides. Smooth out and let another child try.

2. Take rocks that are the same size and throw them with different velocities (drop one, throw one a bit harder, throw another harder still....) and see how that affects the size of the craters.

3. Try throwing the rocks into the flour from an angle to see if the crater is still circular.

4. Talk about the fact that even though the objects hitting the moon aren't round, the craters that are formed often are.

The last activity was to make telescopes and talk to the kids a bit about the different phases of the moon. They can record these themselves on some worksheets that were provided.

All in all, it was a fun and informative day.