🌙
Grade 2 Science · World 3: Moon Watch · Level 19
The Moon Changes Shape
The moon looks bigger, then smaller, in a pattern that takes about a month.
Warm-up, learn, try it together, practice, then a quick check. About 15 minutes.
What children learn in Level 19
- Look at the moon on different nights, and its shape seems to change! Some nights it's a thin curve.
- Night after night, the bright part grows: a thin curve, then half a circle, then almost full, then a full circle.
- Then it shrinks, night after night, until we can hardly see it. Then it starts to grow again.
- The moon doesn't really change. The sun always lights half of it. As the moon travels around Earth, we see more or less of its sunny side.
- The whole pattern takes about a month, and then it repeats.
- Your turn! These moons are growing. Put them in order.
Georgia Standards of Excellence in Science:
- S2E2.d — Use data from personal observations to describe, illustrate, and predict how the appearance of the moon changes over time in a pattern. (Students are not required to know the names of the phases of the moon or understand the tilt of the Earth.)