Phases of the Moon

Education, STEM

As the moon rotates around the earth the sun reflects light on it from different angles creating different appearances of the moon such as a crescent shape or a full moon. These different angles are what we call the phases of the moon. Let’s learn more about them with cookies

Materials:

  • Cookies such as Oreos
  • Paper
  • Markers
  • Spoons

Steps:

1. Start with a piece of paper

2. Draw an earth

3. Draw your sun

4. Add your labels for the different phases of the moon. You can also add arrows if you’d like. This moon phases are:

New moon- the reflection of the sun lights up the moon allowing us to the see the full view of the moon

Waxing crescent- a small slice of the moon is visible

Waxing half or 1st half- half of the moon is visible. The moon has completed a quarter of its rotation or orbit around the earth

Waxing gibbous- the phase after the first quarter where we can see more than half of the moon as the reflected part or visible part grows. Gibbous means hunched or arched

Full moon- during this phase the moon is between the earth and the sun so it is not visible. During this phase things like eclipses happen

Waning gibbous- waning means decreasing and during this phase the moon is losing its brightness and visible size

Waning half or third quarter- half of the moon is visible, but it is the other half from the 1st quarter phase

Waning crescent- the final stage of the moon phases when the moon appears as a small crescent

5. Open your Oreos and use a spoon to make them the shapes of the moon phases such as below. This represents the moon in different phases. The white is the visible part of the moon. And the dark is the shadow of the moon

I started with one oreo and split it in half with all the filling on one side for the new moon and the full moon

Next I spilt a second Oreo with a small crescent and a larger piece of filling on the two halves to make the waning gibbous and the waning crescent

Then I split another Oreo the same way to make the waxing gibbous and waxing crescent

Then I split another Oreo with half of the filling on each side to make the half moons

Congratulations on completing your phases of the moon cookie!