We’ll be doing a lot of science for this book, so today was just part one. We learned all about the moon today and how it appears to change shape as it orbits around the earth. We learned the names of the different phases. We were especially interested to learn that what we’ve been calling a “half moon” for quite a while is actually called a “quarter moon”. This is because we only ever seen one half of the moon, and a half of a half is a quarter! We also learned that when the moon appears to be getting bigger and getting closer to becoming a full moon, it’s called a “waxing moon” . When it is getting closer to being a new moon, it’s called a “waning moon”. We even found a neat calendar online that shows us what the moon will look like at any given time. We discovered that there will be a new moon on Christmas eve, so it’s going to be an extra dark night.
We did a really fun experiment shown in one of our library books. You stick something round on a pen/pencil, such as an orange (a lemon was all we had). Then you take your flashlight to a dark place. You’re head is the earth, the lemon is the moon (marked with an “x” that always faces earth, since the same side is always facing earth) and the flashlight is the sun. As you change positions, you see light on different areas of the moon.
We also made shadows on the wall, since we are learning about that as well and it ties in very well to what we’ve learned about the moon. When the sun is shining on an object, it cannot pass through the object so on the other side, it creates a shadow.
Then after lunch we made the phases of the moon with Newman’s O’s (Organic Oreos basically…Yes, there is such a thing and it makes me feel just slightly better about buying them every once in a while.)