Phases of the Moon

We studied the phases of the moon last week.  The moon changes as it orbits the Earth.  There are 8 phases the moon goes through.  The phases go in this order:  new moon, waxing crescent, first quarter, waxing gibbous, full moon, waning gibbous, last quarter, waning crescent and then it cycles all over again.

This is a diagram that we made with Oreo cookies to show the phases of the moon.

This is a phases of the moon flip-book.  When you open a flap it tells you about each phase of the moon.

We made pictures of the 8 phases of the moon for our classroom.

Galaxies

We read Gail Gibbons book Galaxies, Galaxies! and then created the four most common galaxies with Elmer's glue, glitter and our imaginations.  We live in the Milky Way Galaxy which is a Spiral Galaxy.  Our galaxy is about 100,000 light years wide.  Our solar system is located in one of the arms of our galaxy.  It would take us 30,000 light years to travel from our solar system to the center of the Milky Way Galaxy!

Constellations

We have just begun a unit about Outer Space!  Our first order of business was learning about stars and constellations.  We have learned many exciting facts about stars.  Did you know that most stars live for billions of years?  Stars may also be yellow, orange, white, red or blue.  As stars get older they get bigger. They are huge fireballs of gases in outer space.  Ancient astronomers studied the night sky and many of the constellations we see in the sky today were named by them.