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Grade 4 Science · World 1: Earth and Moon Orbit · Level 5
The Moon's Borrowed Light
Explain that the sun always lights half the moon, and we see different amounts as it orbits.
Warm-up, learn, try it together, practice, then a quick check. About 15 minutes.
What children learn in Level 5
- The moon glows at night, but it makes no light of its own. Moonlight is sunlight bouncing off the moon, the way a mirror reflects light.
- The sun always lights half the moon, the half facing the sun. Look: every moon here is lit on the side toward the sun.
- The moon travels around Earth about once a month. As it goes, we see different amounts of its lit half. These shapes are called phases.
- At new moon, the moon is between Earth and the sun, and its lit side faces away from us. At full moon, it's on the far side of Earth, and we see the whole lit half.
- Phases are not caused by Earth's shadow. They're caused by how much of the moon's lit half we can see.
Georgia Standards of Excellence in Science:
- S4E2.b — Develop a model based on observations to describe the repeating pattern of the phases of the moon (new, crescent, quarter, gibbous, and full).