After my son showed me how to make do the Moon Pie moon cycle activity he had done at school, I brainstormed kids crafts that had a moon theme. After all it is fun to craft and snack on moon features. I really wanted the craft to have 3 dimensional element to it. While cleaning out our craft and learning activity closet, I came across a bin of beans we had used for a St. Patrick’s Day sensory activity. The kidney beans seemed to be just the right size for creating craters.
How This Kids Crafts Idea Came Together
We started by cutting a circle of the cardboard from a cereal box we had in our recycling bin. Despite tracing a circle onto the box by tracing the outline of a plate, our circle didn’t end up being perfect. We seem to have cut it out a little to the inside and outside of the circle. The moon is probably not a perfect circle anyway.
Then the kidney beans were glued down to form five circles. Once again they weren’t perfect circles, I bet the moon’s craters aren’t perfect either. If you try this craft with your kids, you could draw circles for them to glue the beans onto. You could do what we did! We made circle like glue circles on the cardboard and try to arrange the beans on them.
When the beans had had a chance to dry on the circle, we painted the cardboard and the beans gray. (We didn’t have gray paint so, I mixed white and black paint together to create gray paint.) We tried to cover the beans with paint completely. A smaller brush probably would have helped us get into the nooks and crannies of the bean circles. You can see small areas peeking out of paint in a few areas. Kids crafts work out that way sometimes. It gives them a very organic look.
The great thing about creating kids crafts with texture is that when they are dry you can explore them with your fingers. We have fun feeling the inside and the outside of the craters in this kids craft.
Books with a Moon Theme
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My son read the book Jimmy Zangwow’s Out-of-This-World Moon-Pie Adventureat school. He loved this tale of boy who seeks to gather Moon Pies on the moon when his mom says he can’t have one before dinner. It is funny and filled with adventure. My son loves that kind of story.
The Phases of the Moon (Cycles in Nature) is a wonderful non-fiction moon book. It looks at the patterns the moon repeats as it goes through its phases. It is written for early readers and features real pictures.
Other Kids Crafts with a Moon Theme
Fantastic Fun and Learning has a wonderful moon crater craft with Styrofoam.
Decorated moon and a number of other moon activities can be found in this post from What Do We Do All Day?
No Time for Flashcards has created a puffy paint moon craft. It looks really cool.
If you do try any of these moon activities, please leave me a comment below telling me about them or share a picture of them on my Facebook page.
I haven’t tried it yet but I find it a great idea to try in the future (when my 20 months old won’t try to eat the moon).
Don’t worry about the imperfections of the design (not perfect circle & etc), the medium is only the step-stool for the imagination to unravel. 🙂