Pinewood Elementary School / Monica Derby - 9 hours
This week I started my lesson at Pinewood Elementary school. We started with the first day talking about what we could find on a moon. Then what could be on a moon, with no limits. The children gave numerous great ideas that related to a moon that we know, as well as a moon that we would like to know, or have. The students then proceeded to fill out a worksheet that organized their thoughts on their ideal moon. The front had space for a drawing of their moon, and colored with colored pencil. Then the back was to write a paragraph describing their moon, using adjectives. The students came up with many different ideas, but some ideas bounced off of others and had similar ones as well, but had their own twist. The second day they had the opportunity to sculpt their moon out of clay. I demonstrated first what other moons look like from a spacial view, and emphasized that not much is seen from space. I showed pictures of different moons from different planets, such as four of Jupiter's moons and Titan, Saturn's moon. The students were fascinated by the different moons, and they were not aware that some planets had more than one moon. After the presentation and displaying the size comparisons to the students. I handed out the clay and let them sculpt the clay to display their moon that they designed the day before. I gave them plastic eating utensils and popsicle sticks to help make textures. After they sculpted their moons, we pushed paper clips in each moon to help hang from the ceiling when they are done drying. Then on monday we will paint the moons and let them dry, if they dry fast enough we should be able to hang them up later that day. The children were very excited to make their own version of the moon for earth.
