The Moving Moon

With Annalise's World Book study coming to an end, I started looking for a subject we could study together. I had seen some cool Moon projects online and decided that we would set our sites on the Moon.

My intent was to use the moon across the spectrum of subjects and we were mostly successful.  We've read poems about the moon, written poems about the moon, read fiction and non fiction books about the moon, done moon crafts, observed the moon day and night, and this weekend will complete a full phase of the moon.

Our main project has been completing daily "moon tickets".  It has not been practical to view the moon every day or at least not during our school day, so we have been using the U.S. Naval Observatory's website to fill out most of the tickets.

The very first thing we did was read a poem about the moon. I could not find a kid's poem about the moon and many I did find were too long and complicated, so we read 4 lines of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

The moving moon went up the sky
And no where did abide;
Softly she was going up
And a star or two beside.

I did not think before about how the moving moon could be so moving as to inspire poetry, and it did make me think how moving it must have been to people who had no electric lights or telescopes.  The full moon especially is brilliantly bright and the surface is amazingly distinguishable when you compare it to other lights in the sky.

I wrote this haiku for the kids:

Phases

Bright round ball of light,

fading sliver in the sky,

now you've disappeared. 

They collectively wrote this one:

Moon

It's there, then it's gone.

It comes at night or in day,

like a bright flashlight.

I'll post more about our other moon related projects soon.  It has been very interesting...and sometimes very filling!