moon Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Space Math- Moon and Star Muffin Tin Number Game

October 27, 2016 By Deirdre

$Space Math- Moon and Star Muffin Tin Number Game - Exploring Numbers with these Muffin Tin Priintables will be a lot of fun!$

Muffin tin math activities are so much fun! I thought I would make a space math themed muffin tin math activity to go along with the Time for Bed theme the Virtual Book Club is exploring this week.

If you decide your children would like to do more muffin tin math activities, I have created apple, leaf, and apple basket sets you will want to check out too.

Space Math Activities

Supplies

Star and Moon Counting Cups Printable
Star Shape Objects (Bead, Buttons, or Stickers)
Muffin Tin
Dice

$Space Math- Moon and Star Muffin Tin Number Game - Exploring Numbers with these Muffin Tin printables will be out of this world.$

Space Math Activity Ideas

Once you have printed out your space math star and moon number set, you will need to cut out the circles. Then you will place each one of them into one of the muffin tin sections. Now you are ready to play.

Count and Add

You can have your children place the correct number of stars in each numbered section. You will probably want them to start with the number one and count up to ten.

Roll and Count

You can have your children roll a die or dice. They will then have to place the correct number of star shaped items into the section of the tin that has that number circle in it.

Call Out a Number

Two people play this game. One will call out a number and then the other will locate that number. Once they find that number, they will place the correct number of object into that section of the tin.

The players can take turns calling out numbers and place in objects. One person could call out one number at a time until on the sections are filled. Then they can have the other person call out the numbers to them.

If you like these space math games, you might like one of the math games below:

Solar System Math Facts

Graphing Ocean Animals

$Space Math- Moon and Star Muffin Tin Number Game$

STEM Science Activity- The Moon, Willoughby, and The Moon Buggy

March 19, 2016 By Deirdre

This post contains affiliate links.

We recently read a whole bunch of storybooks about the moon. I asked JDaniel to pick his favorite. Willoughby and the Moon was the one he said was the very best one. I try to share you books he has loved so today I am sharing Willoughby and the Moon and a fun STEM science activity for kids that is based on the book.

Let me start by telling you about the book. Willoughby is a little boy who loves to watch the stages of the moon from his bedroom window. He is also afraid of the dark. One night instead of finding it in the sky he finds it in his bedroom closet. This begins an out of this world adventure with a giant silver snail that is afraid of tons of things. Willoughby travels with the snail to find his special toy ball on the moon. He ends up playing ball with a lot of giant silver snails. The illustrations in this book are amazing. I think they are one of the reason JDaniel loved this book.

STEM Science Activity- Moon Buggy Travel

Willoughby travels on the moon in a moon buggy. The buggy leaves tire treads on the moon’s surface. The bottom of one of our egg cartons looked a little like moon buggy tread marks.

We tried placing different types of objects in the egg carton to see if they would make deeper tire treads on our pretend moon surface. The moon’s surface was represented by flour placed in an aluminum baking pan. We used glass pebbles, rocks, and rice in the egg carton as the weights.
Each experiment followed the same procedure. We filled each of the carton’s egg cups with the same object. Then the egg carton was placed in the pan filled with flour. The egg carton was pressed into the flour with some force. We didn’t use a lot of force. Too much force would have caused the egg carton to crack. Finally we used a ruler to measure the depth of the deepest mark in the flour.

While we found slightly different measurements, none of the objects in the egg carton made a really deep dent. We concluded that having the weight of the objects spread out probably made a difference.

We will have to try more weight displacement activities before making a final conclusion.

You will find more science experiments like this experiment on my Early Learning Science board on Pinterest. Please take moment to check them out.

This post is part of storybook science series hosted by Inspiration Laboratories. Each day in the month of March a different children’s book will be tied to science project. I hope you will check them all out.

Moon With Craters Kids Crafts

February 16, 2015 By Deirdre

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

The links below are affiliate links.

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.

Moon Pie Moon Cycle Activity

February 5, 2015 By Deirdre

“Have you ever had a Moon Pie?” JDaniel asked me when he got into the car a couple of weeks ago after school. “Why? Yes, I have,” I replied. “ Did you know you could learn about the moon cycle with one?” JDaniel queried. “Can you tell me how you did your Moon Pie moon cycle phases activity?” I asked him. “No,” he said, “I will have to show you.”

When I stopped at the store last week to pick up an extra gallon of milk, I noticed a display of Mini Moon Pies just as I came in the store. I just had to get a box of them so, JDaniel could show me how to explore the moon cycle phase by phase.

To say that he was thrilled would be an understatement. He loved that I bought Moon Pies and that he was going to get to show me the moon cycle activity.

Here is what he said I needed to do to create the moon cycle phases:

First you have to nibble craters around the Moon Pie. The moon is filled with craters.

Next you have to use your finger nail to draw where you will need to bite the Moon Pie to create a gibbous moon. Be careful to not overbite or you will skip a moon phase.

Draw an arc on the Moon Pie to indicate where you will need to bite to create a quarter moon. You will notice that the moon is getting smaller and smaller I was told. He held up this Moon Pie to show me what my Moon Pie should look like. (Did I forget to tell you that I was doing this activity too?) Then we took a large bite of the Moon Pie up to the mark we had made.

Finally take a small bite out of the remaining Moon Pie to create a crescent moon. I was told that I didn’t need to mark my Moon Pie this time. I just had to be very careful when taking a bite.

The phases of the moon aren’t completed I was told, but the treat is. “Just pop it in your mouth and I will tell you want the next moon phases are!” he told me.

He explained that there would a new moon, another crescent, another quarter, and another gibbous stage. “This time that add to the moon. They don’t take away. Since you can’t do that with a Moon Pie, you will have to imagine it.”

I thought about what he had said about having to imagine it. Then I search on Pinterest and found a creative moon cycle phase idea from Little Family Fun that uses frosting on top of the Moon Pie to show the moon phases. I think this idea might help us complete the moon phase cycle. We will have to try it.

Here are some moon themed activities tied to books we have done:

Space Boy Learning Activities

Joey and the Jet into Space

If you decide to try either of these moon cycle activities, please leave me a comment below telling me about how it went or share a picture of it on my Facebook page.