Kitah Gimmel Moon Lesson

The Night Sky Unit:  Week 6

This week Kitah Gimmel learned about the things we see in the night sky.  As we studied creation this week, the children discovered that Ha'Shem created night and day.  Therefore, we focused on the night sky, because the night sky holds many mysteries to discover!  We discussed what children know about the moon.  Becker told the class, "The ones that are half (referring to the moon) are called crescents."  I then asked, "Why does the moon change it's shape?"  Students replied in the following ways.  Lily said, "Because of the planet."  Yannai said, "It gets bigger, bigger, and bigger.  It moves."  Evan said, "And we are spinning so slow we can''t even see it."  Annabelle wore a shirt with a peace sign on it and Lily came up to her and said, "It's a moon!".

We read a book called, The Moon Seems to Change, and talked about how we live on the planet earth, which has 1 moon.  Lily mentioned, "I don't see the earth because I'm in it!"  We discussed how the earth spins so slowly that we can't see it spinning.  I asked Caleb to stand up and pretend to be the earth and Lily as the moon.  I spun Caleb around and asked him if at some point he could only see part of Lily.  I told the children that it is why some nights we only see part of the moon, for example, a crescent moon or half moon.  Later that day, we made moon rocks by combining baking soda, food coloring, glitter and water.  The children had fun playing with the squishy, sparkly moon sand!