Sunday, February 21, 2010

Tracking the Phases of the Moon

Tomorrow we start our unit study on Astronomy. Each of the children will be tracking the phases of the moon over a 28 day period. We are using The Astronomy Adventure by Andy and Briana Stratton from Stratton House as one of our primary resources for this unit. Included in the curriculum is a Lunar Phase Tracking Chart with pictures of the moon for 28 days. The student is to match the picture of the moon on the Lunar Phase Tracking Chart with the moon in the sky and then fill in the date below the proper moon.

Hopefully, we will have lots of clear nights over the course of our study where the moon is easily visible. Just in case there are nights where we can't clearly see the moon, I wanted a back-up plan. After a bit of searching, I found this great site with a Moon Phase Calculator. I printed out a copy for February and March and put them in a page protector. Now, we have a resource to help us track the phases of the moon on those cloudy nights when the moon is difficult to see.

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