Moon Craters

   In my kindergarten classes, we have been talking about the night sky and last week, we focused on the moon. How long does it take for the moon to orbit the earth and long does it take for the moon to go through all of its phases (29.5 days)? What are the phases? What does the surface of the moon look like? etc.

   First, we used Google Earth and Google Sky to explore the moon. We learned that the moon has mountains and craters caused by different sized asteroids. Brave teacher that I am, we decided to recreate the moon's surface using flour and cocoa powder (for color). First, I let them do it inside. Each group had a round container with "moon dust" and a selection of different size "asteroids" (balls). They were instructed to drop different sized asteroids from different heights to see how this affected the size of the craters. I have since created a lab sheet for this activity which will be posted in my TPT store. After a lot of fun and a huge mess, we moved outside! :)