Teaching the Phases of the Moon

For Family Home Evening this week, I decided it would be time to introduce the concept of the New Moon to my 3 year old. He is already familiar with the Full Moon as well as the crescent moon(s). But tonight would be the first time I called his attention to the seeming absence of the moon in the sky.

The night of the New Moon (Jan 4th), we'll take a trip outside to observe this natural phenomenon and in preparation for it, I wanted to teach a some intro. A visual would be necessary and given the difficulty of modeling it with balls and flashlights (which we've done before) I turned to something a little easier (for the parents at least, and I hope it was as effective as, if not more, for learning from a child's perspective).

What did I turn to? Youtube, of course!

A search for "Phases of the Moon" will pull up some fun, interesting, and easy to understand results.

Like, this one from the History Channel.


This one provides a good one for parents to stop and talk about what is being seen in a way that in understandable to the age and cognitive ability of children without worrying about a soundtrack to get in the way:


And for a little more in depth conversation and discussion:


And this one is just a bit of fun. Please don't get too frustrated with the egregious mispronunciation of Waning.


Another resource for teaching the phases of the moon would be in books. Papa, Please Get the Moon For Me by Eric Carle is our favorite at home and one that taught Chunka (my three year old) to recognize when the moon "is little" (a crescent) and small enough to pull down from the sky.

To bring language development and kinetic learning in (and this was Chunka's idea, not mine), we talked about the ASL signs for moon. (Search Main Dictionary, In "M" scroll for moon which also includes videos for crescent moon and full moon).

Those are my ideas for a short, engaging and developmentally appropriate lesson on teaching the mechanics of the phases of the moon. What else would you add? I'm particularly interested in books. What books do you know of that illustrates how the moon changes throughout the month?

Next will be teaching and sharing the spiritual, biological, cultural and historical significance of the changing phases of the moon. One step at a time...

Though, that does give a good lesson plan for the next few months.

So please, what resources can you think of to teach these concepts to young children? Please respond in the comments or by writing a post of your own!