Fun Moon Activities

We've done so many Moon-related activities over the years, I feel like everyone must be quite tired of them—but I guess each one is for a new crop of children! And even the older ones came drifting over when we were doing these activities for Elementary School, saying, "Oh yes…making craters…I love this!"—and before we knew it they were launching chocolate chips into our pudding as well! :)

There are a couple different ways to model craters. One is in pudding, as shown also here. And one is with flour and baking cocoa, which is probably a more accurate way to see phenomena like ejecta patterns and double cratering.

For this model, you just sift a layer of flour into a cake pan, and cover it with a layer of baking cocoa. This allows you to see what happens when the bottom material is disturbed by an impactor, and how the material can be thrown up onto the surface. You can read better instructions here.

Another fun activity—Moon Phase cookies. We originally saw this idea for making moon phases in Oreos, but since we like homemade Oreos much better than real ones, we always make our own. The recipe is at this link (it's really easy!). The only downside is that when the children spread the frosting themselves, it's not quite as neat as when they just carve phases into the pre-made circle of Oreo frosting! But it's fine. They like eating them, anyway. :)

Anyway, everyone had a very good grasp of moon phases, by the end. We filled out these moon charts by looking at the moon every night for a month, and they really had fun with that too.

Playing "moon tennis" with balloons and paper plate paddles—this is an activity we did last time we had this unit that was fun to repeat. I don't know if it really teaches that much about the moon, except that batting a balloon around feels weird, and playing with a ball on the moon probably would feel lighter. Well, anyway, we had fun.

But the MOST fun "moon" activity we did was renting this Bouncy House! Of course this is even more of a stretch, I suppose, learning-wise—but how better to celebrate the moon than bouncing around pretend you're walking on it? We stumbled onto a half-price bounce house rental deal and couldn't pass it up! We've never done anything like this before, so it was VERY exciting and even the older children had a great time!

Ziggy took awhile to warm up to the idea (it was big, and kind of loud because of the fan) but he was definitely fascinated and had LOTS to say and remember about the "bouncy slide" after we returned the rental the next day!

Even Baby Gus got to slide down!

And a bonus picture of the lovely crescent moon, with Venus shining brightly across the temple spire from it. We looked at Venus with the binoculars and were even able to see its phases!

Collecting Insects

We had so much fun collecting insects wherever we went during this unit! We took our nets and jar with us whenever we drove anywhere, and we took several field trips specifically to search for insects in different habitats. The beautiful Fall weather made this the perfect time to enjoy being outside and insect-hunting! We ended up letting lots of insects free after catching them, since we only really wanted one of most things for our collection. Sometimes the children made little "homes" for the insects in boxes and jars so they could observe them for a few days before letting them go. So fun.

You can see our finished (at least for now) insect collection in this post. There are also details on what collecting supplies we used.

By the creek—there were so many dragonflies and damselflies here! And they are FAST!

Millcreek Canyon

Silver Lake

North shore of the Great Salt Lake, near the Spiral Jetty. This was a really strange and interesting place because there was a whole line of dead insects, preserved in the salt flats around the lake. We found HUNDREDS of dead ladybugs, and lots of beetles and praying mantises and grasshoppers and other things too. It was really fascinating. We weren't sure why there were so many: maybe they were insects from all over the lake that had died while drinking the salt water, and then they all washed ashore here?

Millcreek Canyon, again

American Fork Canyon—getting a little schoolwork done as well! :)

Calcite Onyx Rockhounding

We have this rockhounding guide to Utah and we LOVE it (make sure you get the latest version, which has color pictures!). Last time we studied rocks, we went hunting for obsidian, topaz, calcite, and wonderstone. This time we wanted to see some new sites, so we went to the back of the Nebo Loop to hunt for calcite onyx. It's not real onyx, but the beautiful stripes and bands make it so beautiful! There are instructions on finding the spot here, but I think the book I linked above gives even better directions.

It was the most beautiful spring day. I thought Fall was the absolute best time to be out rockhounding, but I am starting to consider Spring a strong contender!

If you find the right spot to park off of the Nebo Loop road, it's quite an easy hike up to the calcite deposit. You go up the trail for 15-20 minutes, and suddenly, there's a huge rocky outcropping. Up close you can see the colored veins sparkling in the sun. It's really beautiful!

Daisy brought Rosie along to help collect rocks.

We spent all morning collecting rocks and exploring around in the warm sun. It was so beautiful. Even Teddy enjoyed himself…for a time.

We had our picnic in this green meadow.

After eating, Theodore became enraged for some reason, so after we couldn't stand the screaming anymore, we put him several yards away to scream by himself. Poor little lamb. It made him madder than ever.

THIS little angel, on the other hand, was as happy as a lark to be out in the mountains.

Finally the clouds started rolling in, so we took our buckets and headed back down the mountain. It was a lovely day!