Moon Munch

Phases of the Moon Activity
This is a foldable graphic organizer used as a non-linguistic representation piece for the four basic phases of the moon (I've also done 8 phases with this).

What You'll Need

• Pre-made baggies of 5 low-fat vanilla wafers (I give out one extra in case of cookie disaster)
• pre-cut, taped and folded foldable (one piece of printer paper for each child, hamburger folded, cut, and taped in the center to hold the two pieces together)
• crayons
• writing paper
• rulers

Directions

• Have the students draw a line that leaves a 1 inch space at the bottom of the foldable.  This is to label each drawing.
• Have the students use the vanilla wafers as template to draw out the New Moon, First Quarter Moon, Full Moon, and Last Quarter Moon.  They will have to nibble out sections for the quarter moon.
• Have the students color in each section with a black/and or yellow crayon.
• Once finished, the students can write a paragraph, which can be stapled to the moon phases foldable, explaining what the phases are, naming the phases, and telling why the the moon appears to change shape as it goes through its 29-day cycle.

The kids make the comment every time I do this that their outlines are a bit lumpy.  This a great opportunity to talk about craters on the moon and why the moon isn't smooth.

The students love this activity because they get to eat cookies, and I love this activity because it's a fun way to learn the phases of the moon in two different ways; linguistic and non-linguistic.  Enjoy!