Learning About the Moon {With Great Science Adventures}
This post is sponsored by Common Sense Press. All opinions are my own.
Are your kids fascinated with space? Mine are- and I don’t blame them. There’s something magical about looking up at the sky and seeing stars beyond stars beyond stars just floating out there.
Over the last month, the kids and I have had the chance to learn more about space with Great Science Adventures The World of Space, by Common Sense Press.
Learning About the Moon
Great Science Adventures had a ton of awesome ideas for learning about the moon. We started by reading one of the mini-books about the moon, and then we jumped into the activities!
This is just one of many lessons within their curriculum:
Is the moon luminous?
For this experiment, we got a flashlight and some lotion, and headed into the bathroom to see how light reflects off the mirror. We started first by discussing how the moon is like the mirror- it doesn’t light up on it’s own. Then, we shined the flashlight at the mirror to see the light reflect.
The moon’s surface is dark and porous, so it only reflects about 12 percent of the sun’s light- at best. So, to demonstrate this, we “drew” a moon on the mirror using lotion, and then tested to see how reflective the moon’s surface would be. The flashlight lit up our “moon” and was a wonderful demonstration for the kids as to how the moon appears to glow without being luminous.
How are moon craters formed?
This was my kid’s favorite activity of the month. We’ve spent some time looking at the moon through the telescope and have admired the many craters on the surface of the moon. The kids wondered how all those circles got on the moons surface, so we did this fun and easy experiment to see how the impact of meteors form craters on the moon.
As we threw the “meteors” at the “moon surface” I had the kids pay special attention to the angle at which they threw their rocks, and how hard they threw them. We stopped after each rock to see the shape of the crater left behind, and to see how different angles and sizes made different crater shapes.
Learning about moon phases:
In addition to this activity, the curriculum suggests the kids keep “moon journals” and draw the phase of the moon each evening. You can do this easily by creating little booklets out of plain white paper and sending the kids out each day to observe and draw the moon as they see it. At the end of the month, they should have created a little flipbook to see the phases of the moon right in their hand.
We also pulled out some of our moon phase printable worksheets, and had the kids create moon phases out of oreos and put them in order:
What is the curriculum like?
The World of Space includes both non-consumable lessons, “Lots of Science Library Books” and graphics pages for assembling a lap book or interactive notebook. Our family copies these elements so each child can have their own copy of the books (and so I can leave the main text intact!).
Each Great Science Adventures book contains 24 lessons, and our family found that completing one lesson per week was just about perfect for us.
Each lesson includes a short overview of the science concepts covered, vocabulary, reading from the “Lots of Science Library Books,” hands-on activities and lab experiments, lapbooking work, and supplementary assignments for additional exploration.
We’d likely go through two books in a year, but if you had kids who really love to go “down the rabbit hole” they could easily spend two weeks per lesson and do extra exploration actives, watch videos online and read books on the topic.
I really appreciate that the activities in Great Science Adventures are purposeful. This curriculum uses an “investigative loop” to move students through the scientific process, from asking questions to doing research, making observations, forming conclusions, and communicating those conclusions. I love that the activities always end with conversation which always seems to lead to additional questions in our home!
If you’re looking for a complete, fun, no-nonsense science program, I highly reccomend this series for elementary and middle school students.
Pin it for Later
Human body and senses and the space book would be awesome!
We would love space and light and sounds.
We would love to win Atoms & Tools and Technology!
Earth’s Landforms & Space, please. By the way, wonderful blog 🙂
Atoms and Molecules and Light and Sound
Insects and Arachnids and Plants!!
Would love to win the Human Body and Senses and The World of Tools and Technology! Thanks for the chance!
Space and Oceans for us!
Ocean and Landforms. These look great!
Human body and, atoms, moclecules and matter.
Human body and ocean
Human body and Ocean!
Definitely Space and Ocean!
World of vertebrates and the world of space ?
Ooo, thsee look fun!
Space and Molecules would be right up our alley!
Thank you!
Tools and a Technology and we’d love the one on Plants as well!
The space and ocean ones! Thank you for the opportunity to win!
My kids would love space and the ocean.
human body and tools
We would like space &human body. Thanks
plants and insects and arachnids or vertebrates. I really like them all
Discover land marks and ocean thanks for giveaway
My kids enjoy studying about space and the human body.
human body and space
Would love “World of Space” and Plants
We’d love to win space and atoms molecules
Discovering the Ocean
light and sounds; tools and technology
Human Body and Tools would be fantastic!
The world of space and the human body
Human body and vertebrates
My boys would love The World of Space and DISCOVERING ATOMS, MOLECULES, AND MATTER
Space and Human Body
World of Light and Sound and World of Space. Hard to choose. I love science, so I want all of them.
Plants and space!
Space, moon
We would love human body and plants. Thanks!
Tools and space. Thank you and good luck to all.
Earths landforms and Atoms
Hi Heather. Thank you once again for sharing! I love so many of their titles since I am always looking for new content and different takes. I like the ones on space, atoms, human body, light, land forms and plants. I would love to add any (or all) of those to my library. Thank you again!
Atoms and space ones are the ones we would like to add to our library 🙂
Plants & Atoms/molecules books would both be topics I would love to go more in depth with my munchkins. Thank ypubfor the giveaway opportunity!
Human body and ocean looks great!
space and human body please
I’d love the Human Body or the molecules book!
Space and Human Body!
Space and Human Body 😀
The World of Space.
Earth’s Landforms, and Tools & Technology look interesting.
Atoms, molecules, and matter and Human Body
Plants and Great Science Adventures The World of Space sound great!
Discovering Atoms, Molecules, and Matter & The World of Tools and Technology look perfect for my kids!
I’d get Landforms and Light and Sound. 🙂
Put the wrong e-mail…if I win, can you use this one (in e-mail field).
Human body & Space
Would love tools and the space book.
Human body and space!
Discovering atoms, molecules and matter
&
The world of space
I would love to win discovering the human body and senses and The World of Vertebrates.
Tools and space.
Would love plants and ocean. Thank you!!
The Human Body and Space would be big hits around our house!
The Human Body and Plants 🙂
I think this would be a really hard choice to make. When I was reading through all of the options I think we may enjoy all of them. We are living in Georgia right now and are just a few minutes from quite a few major beaches so I think that “Discovering the Ocean” would be a great one to have for this upcoming school year. I also think we would enjoy “The World of Space” and “Discovering the Human Body and Senses.” I did like that they offered less commonly explored subjects such as “light and sound” and “Tool of Technology”. Both would be great STEM resources to cover and my son may enjoy them over the other topics. I have never heard of this publisher and for the price I am seriously considering trying at least one of these books out over summer break to get a feel for them. How do you think they compare to Apologia?
My kids enjoy Space, the Human Body, and Tools & Technology.
We would LOVE the Space one and Discovering Atoms, Molecules and Matter!!!!
The The Human Body and Senses and The World of Space.
All the books look great, but I would choose The World of Space and Discovering the Human Body and Senses.
Atoms, Molecules, and Matter and Tools and Technology
Discovering Atoms, Molecules, and Matter and The World of Light and Sound
The Planets are amazing! The human body too.
We’d love to have Tools & Technology as well as Atoms, Molecules & Matter. Thanks for the giveaway and good luck to everyone!
The world of plants and Atoms, molecules and matter
World of space or the one about atoms & molecules.
Tools and space
Human Body and Tools I think!
Discovering the Earth’s Landforms and The world of space please (and thank you 🙂 ).
Space and Human body.. But so many of them look great! Hard choice!
I’d love to win some science books. It’s one of the hardest subjects for me to teach. I’d choose Insects & Arachnids and Atoms, Molecules & Matter.
Human Body and the Senses would be perfect for my co-opinion class and Tools and Technology would be a hit with the boys. Thanks for the chance.
Co-op. Stupid auto-correct. 🙂
“THE WORLD OF LIGHT AND SOUND” and “THE WORLD OF INSECTS AND ARACHNIDS” look like great picks!
Human body and senses,thanks!
We would love to try Space & Earth’s Landforms!
We are studying the Human Body next year – so that would be the one I would love to win! I’ve never heard of this company before – off to learn more about them!
Plants and the human body look wonderful.
Space and Tools and Technology please.