Skip to main content

Cookie Moon Phases


I've seen these cookie moon phases before (click here for a description of the activity on Science Bob's Blog) and wanted to share my "Moon Phase" cookie story.


After seeing these online I thought it would be fun to do it in class as part of our Astronomy unit. I decided to make these at home. They turned out adorable. Then I decided to eat them (justifying that I would let my kids eat them in class :) It quickly became apparent that 8 Oreo cookies was way too many to eat (I definitely felt queasy). I went back to the online directions and found out that I was suppose to use "mini Oreo cookies" (which made much more sense).



A note of caution, the mini Oreo cookies may not be as cost effective with large groups of children (when I taught middle school I had 80+ children). It is definitely cheaper to buy the generic chocolate sandwich cookies. I would just provide a snack or sandwich baggie so the kids could take the leftovers home.
Labels:

Comments

Clutter-Free Classroom said…
What a fun and yummy idea!!!

❤Jodi from...
★★The Clutter-Free Classroom★★
Helping Teachers Get Organized
August 20, 2011 at 4:38 PM
Mrs. Space Geek said…
I have done this activity for many years with second grade. It is one of my favorite ways to reinforce moon phases after teaching it. I too felt that the mini Oreos were the way to go. Always had enoughbleft overs for an aftervschool snack.
August 29, 2011 at 8:12 PM
lezlie said…
This is a great idea, however the first and third quarter moons are mislabeled. The waxing "half" moon is the first quarter moon. The waning "half" moon is the third or last quarter moon.
September 3, 2011 at 10:27 PM
Mrs. K. said…
ha! I guess I've never read the directions, either (just loved the pictures), because I never noticed you're supposed to use the mini cookies. Glad you said something about it here. I'll teach 500 students (the entire school) in my K-4 science position next year. I wanted to do this activity with at least a couple of grades, but that could mean way more money from my pocket than I'm willing to spend. Hmm.... Thanks for the food for thought (pun intended). :)

~Mrs. K. from The Teacher Garden Blog
July 20, 2012 at 6:09 PM
Unknown said…
Eight Oreo cookies is too many? I eat them by the sleeve! Ha ha.
Wouldn't the smaller ones be harder to do, though? Maybe we will try partners.
October 7, 2019 at 4:07 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Weathering, Erosion, and Deposition Activity

I saw this activity at a science conference years ago and haven't had a chance to use it in a classroom until this week (mainly because I didn't teach weathering, erosion, and deposition). It is a great way to reinforce the definition of the weathering, erosion, and deposition in a highly kinesthetic manner. Basically you break the students up into groups of three. One group is "Weathering" another group is "Erosion" and the third group is "Deposition". Add tape to the back because you are going to stick them to the forehead of the children in each group. The "weathering" students get a sheet of paper that is their "rock" they will be breaking down. At the start of the activity the "weathering" students will start ripping tiny pieces of their "rock" and handing it to the "erosion" students. The "erosion" students will be running their tiny piece of "rock&
5 comments
Read more

Picture of the Day - Activity

I attended a training class and a science coach shared an activity that he does with his students to help them differentiate between observations, inferences, and predictions. He puts a picture on the interactive white board as a warm up (he gets the pictures from a variety of sources but uses National Geographic's Picture of the Day a lot). The picture above is from the National Geographic site. He has the students make five observations. Then he makes the students make five inferences. Finally he has the students make five predictions. He does this every day and it really drives home the difference between those three key inquiry vocabulary terms. I've done this activity with both my sixth and fourth grade science classes and the students really got into it and became proficient at telling me the difference between those terms.
13 comments
Read more

Bill Nye Songs with Lyrics

At the end of the Bill Nye videos he always has a fun song that goes with the episode. You can find many of the songs as stand alone videos on YouTube. This came in handy because today I am teaching a lesson on layers of the atmosphere and found a song from his Atmosphere video on YouTube titled "Fresh Aire." I really wanted to remix it and put the lyrics on the video (so the kids could sing along and see how the lyrics matched the lesson). The first thing I did was found a site that has all the Bill Nye lyrics posted used my YouTube downloader ( see instructions here ) and downloaded the song. I then imported the video into Movie Maker Live and used the caption feature to put the lyrics on the different frames (cutting and pasting from the lyrics site into Movie Maker Live). I saved the video and reposted to YouTube so other teachers could use the video with lyrics (the finished video is posted above). The process was pretty easy and I am thinking about doing it for more
Post a Comment
Read more