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You are here: Home / Learn / Science / Make a Moon Phase Viewer

Make a Moon Phase Viewer

September 3, 2009

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My son and I are enjoying our time spent learning about the moon. love to learn about the moon. We have been reading some books about the moon lately (see end of post for three of them) and I have been working on some moon activities to accompany our reading.

Moon phase activity for kids. Build a moon phase viewer.

The first activity  is our Moon Phase Viewer. I know this is not a good tutorial with photos and everything and the result is not a beautiful creation… For all you crafty folks out there I would like you to know that I did try hard, but let’s face it, I will never be featured on The Crafty Crow. (The title of this post should really be, “How I Make the Coolest Project Ever but Can Only Get Terrible Photos of It.”)

Moon activity for kids. Learn about the phases of the moon with a diy viewer.

I found another use for the salt containers I have been hoarding…
First I cut off one end of the salt container. In the opposite end I used an x-acto knife to cut 4 moon phases: new, full, half and crescent. I lined the full moon cut out with blue cellophane and the others with yellow. I then attached a circle with a cut out to the same end using a brad (you can see in the photo).
handmade moon phase viewer teaches kids about the phases of the moonAt the reverse end of the container I cut a hole to fit a small flashlight, inserted and taped the flashlight in place (otherwise I knew Kiddo would push it into the viewer and we would have to take it apart to retrieve the light! I taped the end back in place and decorated it with construction paper and stickers.

Here is a blurry photo of the full moon made by the viewer. But don’t forget to check out the real thing in the night sky. You could even keep track of the phases and recycle some of those old calendars at the same time with our easy peasy moon phase calendar activity.

Reading Assignment (affiliate links):
Papa, Please get the Moon for Me
I Took the Moon for a Walk
The Moon Seems to Change

Check out all 5 of our moon activities.

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by: Erica posted in: Science 7 Comments

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Comments

  1. Heidi says

    September 3, 2009 at 3:26 pm

    Hi! I'm not sure how I ended up at your blog–I've been sidebar-link-hopping this morning–but I think this project is awesome! And totally worthy of the Crafty Crow, too, by the way.

    I've been wanting to make some sort of lunar calendar for my daughter and this is excellent! I've bookmarked your site!

    Reply
  2. Sherry says

    September 3, 2009 at 3:20 pm

    That is very cool! I'm bookmarking this one, for sure. 🙂

    Reply
  3. BranFlakes says

    September 3, 2009 at 7:37 pm

    This is AWESOME!! Thank you for the great idea!

    Reply
  4. 5 orange potatoes says

    September 3, 2009 at 11:50 pm

    LOL! You are too funny with that crafty crow comment!

    I LOVE this idea! It's fantastic.

    Lisa 🙂

    Reply
  5. happybirdycake.blogspot.com says

    September 17, 2009 at 9:14 pm

    oh!!! this project is fantastic! we've been saving oatmeal containers for a star constellation project! but we will have to try this first! thanks for sharing!

    Reply
  6. The Bobinator says

    May 19, 2015 at 6:05 pm

    what else can we use instead of salt containers

    Reply
    • Erica MomandKiddo says

      May 20, 2015 at 6:00 am

      The salt container is simply a cardboard cylinder so any other cylindrical container would work.

      Reply

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