Phases of the Moon

I think its safe to say I am addicted to Pinterest, and SO many of my ideas and inspirations come from that wonderful site. I had seen the phases of the moon recreated with oreos before and loved it so I thought I would give it a try with the third graders. We were wrapping up our unit on Space/Solar System and had discussed the phases of the moon and done a few other activities with it. This was a great hands on activity to end the unit. I love lessons like this where the kids are all invested in the activity. There were no behavior problems and they were able to pull together as teams to complete the task. I also saw them using the various references in the room (posters, text) to verify their moon phases.

This took about 20-25 minutes to complete and started out with them cutting out the phases of the moon from a piece of paper. They then had to arrange them in order and show that the phases are a cycle. 

Then I passed out the oreos and demonstrated how to remove the frosting with a spoon. This came easier to some groups more than others. (They were not graded on how well they were able to remove the frosting, rather that they had the phases in the correct order and had removed the appropriate amount of frosting.)

I had some very happy third graders when they were finished as they were allowed to sample the phases :)