Teaching science in elementary school is crucial for nurturing young minds. But as educators, finding the time and resources to create engaging lessons can be a challenge. That's where this podcast comes in.

Welcome to Naturally Teaching Elementary Science, the show dedicated to supporting elementary teachers in their quest to bring authentic and place-based science experiences to their classroom. I'm Victoria Zablocki, a certified elementary teacher turned outdoor educator. With over a decade of experience coaching teachers on effective science teaching methods, I'm passionate about making science accessible, understandable, and fun for educators and students alike.

Join me as we explore strategies for teaching science in elementary school with practical teaching tips, insightful interviews, picture book reviews, and more. Whether you've taught for a long time or just started your teaching journey, this podcast is your trusty resource for enhancing your science curriculum. So let's grow together.

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Naturally Teaching Elementary Science podcast. My name is Victoria Zablocki and I'm your host.

If you've listened to the Naturally Teaching Elementary Science podcast before, you might think I sound a little funny today. I've been battling one of those fall colds. Bear with me as my voice sounds a little bit ridiculous.

But I really wanted to make sure we didn't miss any time, and hopefully my voice will be better by next week. So at the time of this episode airing, we're still in October, you know, the month of spookiness. And what better way to wrap it up than introducing the idea of moon phase activities.

So not only is October associated with darkness, but it quite literally is getting darker each day as we get closer to the winter solstice. Which makes this a great time to look to the moon for an interesting way to fulfill your curricular goals. So as our hours of daylight dwindle, there are more hours of night for your students to be able to enjoy the moon and its phases.

[2:08]

So lately, I've been adding a teaching tip to the end of the episodes, but today I wanted to start with a science snippet. So in today's science snippet, I wanted to talk about how moon phases are made, since this is a misconception with people of all ages. Moon phases are created because of the positioning of three objects in space, the sun, the earth, and the moon.

The moon is a celestial body that does not emit its own light, even though it appears to. So instead, it's reflecting the light from the sun, and that reflection bounces back to our eyes on earth, making it look like it's glowing. But that doesn't explain how we see the moon phases.

So half of the moon is always illuminated by the sun, but the phases are seen by us on earth, because we're at different angles to that illuminated half of the moon as it revolves around us throughout the month. So as an example, we see the new moon when the moon is between earth and the sun. So the half of the moon that is facing the sun is illuminated, but it's blocked because we're directly behind it, which makes it appear to have disappeared.

Fast forward to the first quarter, and the moon is actually to the perpendicular side of the earth, but it appears to be a half moon because we only see half of the half facing the sun, aka a quarter of the moon. So fast forward again to the full moon, and the earth is actually the one between the sun and the moon this time. So now we can see the entire half that's reflecting the sun's light.

But you may be wondering, if we're in between the sun and the moon, why doesn't our shadow block the sun's light? The moon actually has a five degree tilt in its orbit, so we don't come directly between the sun and the moon, and so that allows the sun's light to bypass us, bounce off the moon, and give us one of our favorite moon phases.

So to revert back to the beginning of the cycle, from new moon to first quarter, we see the waxing crescents, so the crescents that get bigger. From the first quarter to the full moon, we see the waxing gibbuses, so the pieces that are bigger than the half and growing and growing and growing. And then from the full moon to the third quarter, we see the waning gibbuses, those larger than half pieces that slowly get to a half. And from the third quarter to the new moon, we see the waning crescents.

And if you're still not sure what I'm talking about, make sure to listen to the activity for fourth grade, and then you can use that activity to build your own model to stick your head into so that you can see what I'm talking about. Okay, so now that we've gotten a little science background, let's get started with some wonderful moon phase activities. My plan in this episode is to describe moon phase activities for grades K through five.

And for each activity, I'll share the Next Generation Science Standard that inspired that activity, as well as the way the activity relates to moon phases. And make sure that you listen all the way through to the end of the episode, because even though I've paired these activities to particular standards, you may find yourself inspired to use a similar concept for your curriculum, or even use the same activity for a different grade level. So let's get into it.

[5:04]

For kindergarten, the Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled was K-ESS2-1: use and share observations of local weather conditions to describe patterns over time. You may be thinking, Victoria, how on earth does this relate to moon phases? Well, scientists have actually been finding that the moon and its gravity have an effect on the weather here on earth.

There are three main ways that the moon affects weather. First, the gravity of the moon in orbit around the earth affects the tides, which we'll talk about more with the second grade activity later in this episode. But to give you a quick lowdown, when the moon is directly in line with the sun and the earth, like when there's a full moon and a new moon, the tides are the largest and the smallest, being the most dramatic, which moves warm and cold currents around the earth at a faster rate, which then affects the weather across the planet. Whereas when the moon is at a right angle to the earth, like during first quarter and third quarter, the tides are more mild and the difference in weather is less extreme as well.

Second, when the moon is in the same arrangement in line with the sun and the earth, the gravity creates a bulge in the atmosphere closest to the moon that changes the atmospheric pressure, which then affects weather in many ways, including circulation patterns, high pressure belts, cloud coverage, and even the amount of precipitation we experience.

The third way is an ever so slight change in temperature at the poles of the earth. Scientists have found that there is a 0.99 degree Fahrenheit average increase in temperature at the north and south poles during the full moon. If you measure in Celsius, it would be a 0.55 degree Celsius average increase. If you're interested in reading more about how the moon affects weather, I've put a link in the show notes to an article called “How Does the Moon Affect the Tides and Weather?” It's a quick read, but it's got some interesting information and it dispels some common moon myths in the same article, which is nice.

So for the moon phase activity for kindergarten, I'm going to suggest a subtle change in an activity that I've described for kindergarten before, which is weather data collection. So if you haven't heard me talk about weather data collection before, go check out episode 113 on the Outdoor Classroom Podcast called “Roots of Learning: Nature in Elementary Science Education.”

In that episode, I talked with Victoria Hackett about how to create a nature scope and sequence for your classroom. And I used kindergarten Next Generation Science Standards as an example and talked about the importance of taking weather data over the course of your entire school year instead of during a static unit. By collecting data over time, your students will be able to see the ebb and flow of weather during the different seasons and how it shifts with our orbit and positioning around the sun.

My suggestion is to have a day each week or every other week that you collect weather data and add it to your classroom collection. This will provide you a good number of data points for your students to be able to see patterns and the seasonal shifts without it becoming too overwhelming with your busy schedule.

The subtle change to this activity, though, would be to also track the moon phases with your data collection. This way, when you look at your weather data at the end of the month or season, you can look for peaks in temperature or rainfall that may or may not be around the full or new moons. These differences will be more noticeable if you live closer to the poles, but it's still interesting to consider the possibility of seeing a difference in your weather patterns based on the moon phase each month.

[8:19]

So for first grade, the Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled was 1-ESS1-1: use observations of the sun, moon, and stars to describe patterns that can be predicted. This standard speaks directly to moon phases. Moon phases are a part of a predictable pattern that your students can physically see in the night sky.

So even though this standard fits really well with moon phases, moon phases are a pretty abstract concept, which can be hard to grasp, especially for our early childhood learners, so our first graders. To help you introduce the idea of moon phases, consider using a picture book. If you're interested in finding a good picture book to help you out, check out my article, “12 Stellar Books About the Moon, Sun and Eclipses”, which I'll put a link for in the show notes.

There are some great titles in this article that could help your students start to understand why we see the moon in different shapes. And then once you've introduced the concept of moon phases, an activity you could do to help your students see the patterns and the changes would be to keep a moon journal.

So moon journaling can be a form of science notebooking that your students can really get into. Not only will your students be excited about looking for the moon each day and night, their notebooking will be in the form of pictures, which is easier for them to achieve at this age. The pictures will also allow them to see the pattern that the moon phases follow. So, to help your students keep a moon journal, you could approach this in a few different ways.

You could provide them with blank pages where you ask them to draw what the phase is and write any notes that they want to include. This, however, is a more advanced way of keeping a moon journal since a blank page can be intimidating to adults and children alike. If your students have a lot of experience science notebooking, this could be a good option for them.

But if your students are like most first graders, they probably don't have a ton of experience science notebooking. So instead of giving them blank pages, you could provide them with a guided journal. This could look like a week's worth of circles that they fill in the black part of the circle to reveal the part of the moon that was reflecting the light from the sun.

Or it could look like a month calendar with white circles for each day that they can fill in the black part of the moon to reveal the phase. Since it's not likely that all of your students will be able to view the moon each day, make sure to either spend time each school day to review what the previous day's phase was, or spend time at the end of the week reviewing the entire week's moon phases so they can stay current on their moon journal to discover the pattern of the moon phases.

Once you've had a whole cycle's worth of observations, have your students predict what they think will come in the next month and have them do an informal survey, just peek out their window to look for the moon to see if they're correct.

If you're looking for a created for you moon journal, check out my moon phases and light mini unit for first grade on Teachers Pay Teachers. This mini unit includes a simple foldable moon journal that your students can use to record a week's worth of moon phases as well as a key on the back side so they can identify the moon phase that they're seeing. It also includes four ELA activities and four additional science activities to explore light, how it reflects and how that applies to objects in space.

[11:19]

For second grade, the Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled was 2-ESS2-1: compare multiple solutions designed to slow or prevent wind or water from changing the shape of the land. So how does this one relate to moon phases? As I mentioned before, the tides are created by the moon, but they're also created by the sun and are affected by the angle at which the moon is in comparison to the sun and earth, which is also how the different moon phases are created.

So it isn't necessarily that the moon phases cause this change, it's the moon's location which causes the moon phases and also the differences in the tides. So when the sun, moon, and earth are all aligned, like during the new moon or full moon phases, the cumulative gravitational pull from the sun and the moon create the highest high tides and the lowest low tides of the month, and that actually has a name, it's called spring tides. Then when they reach the first quarter and the third quarter, the moon moves into a perpendicular location to the sun and the two celestial bodies partially cancel each other out, and there are more moderate tides called neap tides.

So to show the effect of the moon and the sun on the tides, what I'm suggesting is to play tug of war. To demonstrate the fact that gravitational pull from the moon and the sun affects tides, you're going to split your class into two teams with slightly more students on the moon team, since the moon has more gravitational influence on the tides than the sun. So maybe have 20 moon students and 10 sun students for the teams.

Then to represent the spring tides, the tides with the most variation, and the sun and the moon's gravitational pull adding together, you're going to have half your students on each end of the rope. So about 10 moon students and five sun students on each side. So you want to mark the middle of the rope so that your students can see how much the rope moves.

Then on the ground, you're going to want to mark end lines where they're trying to pull the middle of the rope to, as well as the starting positions for each team. And then that will allow them to see how much variation actually happens when they play this game. Make sure to give them safety rules, though, such as keeping both hands on the rope at all times, all players remain standing and hold the rope with your hands without looping it. These rules are there to dissuade your students from letting go of the rope and making the other team fall.

After your class has duked it out and one team has pulled the middle of the rope past their end line, you'll play round two and this is going to represent the neap tides. So for this round, you'll actually need two ropes tied together to make an X. Again, you'll want to mark the middle of the rope, which is a little easier to see because it's the middle of the X. And then you're also going to want to mark on the ground their ending lines where they're trying to pull to and their starting lines for each of the four sides of the rope.

Then you'll want to assign ten of your moon students to one side of one of the ropes and the other ten moon students to the direct opposite end of the same rope. Then assign five of your sun students to one end of the other rope that's empty and then the last five students to the other end of that same rope. When your students play this time, there will be a lot more resistance and less variation in movement.

In theory, there should be more movement toward the moon side of the rope since there are more students, but you just never know what could happen. It could be helpful to have a device that makes a loud noise like a whistle to get your students' attention when one side of the ropes is pulled past an end line so that you can end each round safely, because they take this game very seriously and you want to keep everybody as safe as possible. It also gets pretty noisy.

After you've had time for the physical play of this activity, talk about what happened. So take a look at the marks on the ground and have them talk about how the two setups affected the overall distance that they traveled when pulling on the rope. Share with them that the distance traveled was similar to the tides and how there's more variation in the high and low tides just like when there were only two sides to the rope and both the sun and the moon were working together to pull and that there's less variation in high and low tides when there were four sides to the rope just like the neap tides when the sun and the moon are working against each other.

Now have them consider erosion. If a scientist were working on a solution to prevent erosion along shorelines, should they pay attention to the spring tides, the neap tides, or tides in between, and why? If you want to read more about this interesting phenomenon, I've linked an article called “Tides and Water Levels” from NOAA in the show notes to help give you a little more background so that you can really facilitate that discussion with your students.

[15:52]

For third grade, the Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled was 3-LS2-1: construct an argument that some animals form groups that help members survive. So how does this relate to moon phases? Songbirds will migrate in groups during the different phases of the moon.

So for this activity, you're going to set up an obstacle course for your students to pretend to be birds migrating. They're going to have a partner as they go through these obstacles. The first round is going to be when it's a full moon, where there's plenty of light for them to fly by.

The second round, one of the students will become blindfolded and will have to work with their partner to be able to make their way through the obstacles carefully. The second one represents more of a quarter moon so that there's some moonlight but not as much as a full moon and not as little as a new moon. If you're looking for some ideas for obstacles, check out episode 20, “6 Migration Activities for the Elementary Classroom”, and you could gather inspiration from the kindergarten activity in that episode.

In that specific obstacle course, the students have been exposed to human-related obstacles, whereas some other options you could include would be fog, removed wetlands, predators, like an owl, that sort of thing. And you'll want to include multiple obstacles for them to have to work around. But remember, your first round should be easy for them to move through because there's a lot of light from the full moon, whereas the second round should be more challenging, and the students have to work together with their partner to be able to get through the obstacle.

Again, this is related to the mood phases because animals in nature fly together during migration so that they're less easy to pick off and they can keep their direction. So include a challenge in the second round, whether you blindfold half of your students or you make it a three-legged race, your students will have to communicate and work together, just like birds when they're migrating during a phase of the moon that doesn't reflect as much light.

[17:43]

For fourth grade, the Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled was 4-PS4-2: develop a model to describe that light reflecting from objects and entering the eye allows objects to be seen. So this relates to moon phases because this is exactly how we see moon phases here on Earth. So again, teaching elementary students how the moon phases are made is challenging, but it can actually be made easier with a model.

So for this activity, what you'll do is you'll get paper plates and cut the centers out to make a hollow circle. And then you're going to provide each of your students eight ping pong balls, white ping pong balls, that they're going to color with black permanent markers. Ping pong balls are really nice to work with because they have a center line.

And so you have your students color half of their ping pong balls black and then leave the other half white. The black side is going to be the side that's in shadow, and then the white side will be the side that's illuminated by the sun's light. Then you're going to provide them a way to be able to hang their ping pong balls from the paper plate.

You could use hole punches to punch holes in the exterior of the paper plate, but you want them to be equidistant. So you could have them start with one on the top of the paper plate, and then punch a hole directly on the opposite side of the paper plate. Then you'll want to have them go in between the middle of those two holes on the side, kind of the three o'clock area, punch another hole, go directly across that one, punch another hole, and then you're going to have them do it one more time, where they go in between each of those sets of holes equidistantly to punch.

And then they should end up with eight holes. And then they could suspend a ping pong ball from each of those holes with something stiff like a pipe cleaner, and then that way they won't rotate and spin while your student's looking at their model. So they could attach pipe cleaners to the ping pong balls with either glue or putty, and then they could hook them through the holes in the paper plate so that they stay in one location.

They want all of the white sides facing the same direction and all of the black sides facing the opposite direction. Then what they can do is they can actually put their head up into the hole of the paper plate, and then they'll be able to see from the perspective of the earth compared to the model, how the angle of the earth creates those moon phases. So the white side again represents the half that's illuminated by the sun, and the black side is the shadow side that doesn't get illuminated by the light from the sun.

When they stick their head up into the “orbit” of the moon, they can spin the paper plate to see that it's revolving around the earth, which happens to be the student's head in this model. And then they'll be able to see how the angle from the earth shows portions of the illuminated side of the moon, and that's how the moon phases are created.

If you're looking for some alternative options to paper plates, you could get green foam floral wreaths from the Dollar Tree, and they would also allow your students to stick the pipe cleaners into the foam to help keep the moons in place. You could also get floral wreath forms from the Dollar Tree as well as cheap but durable options.

[20:46]

For fifth grade, the Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled was 5-LS2-1: develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers and the environment. So how does this one relate to moon phases?

Even though nocturnal animals are well adapted to hunt in the dark, studies have shown that animals tend to be more active when the moon is full because there's more light to help aid in their hunts. So for this activity, you're going to be playing a red light, green light, type tag game that's dictated by the moon phases.

So to play this game, you're going to need to be outside or in a gymnasium where you have a lot of space to work with. All of your students are going to be predators except one or two students, and they'll be the prey. And so the prey are going to be in their own space that's wide open, and your predators are all going to line up in a line shoulder to shoulder, a fair distance away from your prey. Your prey are going to decide if it's a full moon where everyone can run, or if it's going to be a gibbous where your predators will walk, or a crescent where your predators will crawl, or a new moon where your predators have to stop.

Each of these actions will correlate the amount of speed your students get to use with the amount of moonlight available, making it either easier or harder for the predators to hunt for prey while relying on their eyes. Again, they have other adaptations, but right now we're going to work on that eye-to-hunting ability.

So while facing away from your predators, your prey will decide what phase of the moon it is, and they'll shout it out to your predators. This will keep your prey from seeing how close the predators are while their backs are turned. After the prey shouts out what moon phase it is, and the predators start moving towards them with the correct amount of speed, your prey will count to five, and then they'll turn around to see if they catch anybody moving when their bodies are fully turned. If they see anyone moving when they spin around, then those people get caught and they become prey as well.

So it's important for the predators to make sure they're listening for the countdown and to stop and freeze so they don't get caught by the prey. The job of the predators is to move during that five-second window where the prey are counting to try to be the first predator to the prey, but they have to pay close attention because if they get caught moving, then they won't be able to continue chasing the prey. They'll actually become one of the prey.

Once predators reach the prey, each predator can tag one prey because that's the one that they're going to eat, and then all of the rest of the prey are left for other predators to tag. The round is completed when all available prey have been tagged, and you can restart with different prey to give everyone a chance to enjoy both roles. If your students are confused why a predator becomes prey when they're moving, you could put in there that you're actually a tertiary predator that eats them when they move during the time period they're not supposed to move, and then they become the prey as well, if that helps them with the visualization of this game.

[23:36]

In a nutshell, we talked about six different moon phase activities to help you teach this fall. For kindergarten, we talked about tracking the moon phase while taking weather data. For first grade, we talked about keeping a moon journal. For second grade, we talked about tug of war in relationship to tides. For third grade, we talked about a migration obstacle course using blindfolds or some sort of challenge. Fourth grade, we talked about creating a model. And fifth grade, we talked about a tag game.

And don't forget, if you're looking for picture books to help you introduce the moon phases to your students, check out my article “12 Stellar Books about the Moon, Sun and Eclipses”. And again, I'll have a link for that in the show notes.

And also if you're looking for already made moon phase activities, check out my moon phases and light mini unit for first grade on Teachers Pay Teachers. It's got nine lessons including a guided story retelling, a guided graphic for the main topic and key details of informational text, writing a moon story with transition words, sorting moon phase words, opportunities for light investigation, applying newly acquired information, a moon journal and more. Kathleen said, “This resource was wonderful in sharing with my first graders. They were very engaged.”

So thanks for taking time to listen today. I know you're busy and I truly appreciate the time that you take to tune in. If you have any questions, wonderings or moon phase activities that you use, get ahold of me on Instagram at Naturally.Teaching or you can email me at victoria@naturallyteaching.com. And don't forget to check out the show notes for this episode at naturallyteaching.com/episode24. Thanks again for joining me today. And until next time, keep exploring, keep learning, and keep naturally teaching.

Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of the Naturally Teaching Elementary Science podcast. I hope you found it informative, inspiring, and full of actionable insights to enhance your science teaching journey. Connect with me on social media for more updates, science tidbits, and additional resources.

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