Exploring the Lunar Cycle with Stop Motion

As a part of the third grade science curriculum, students spend a considerable amount of time studying our solar system. Among the things in the solar system that they study is the moon. Students are required to know many things about the moon including how it gets its light, how it moves around in our solar system and probably the most difficult to understand they need to know about the Lunar Cycle. Not only do students need to know that our moon looks a little different each night, but they also have to know each phase and must be able to explain how and why this phenomena occurs.

As you can probably imagine, this is a very difficult concept for students to grasp, especially since it is not something that they can readily observe. This is why we make it observable! In class we created a diorama containing the Earth, Sun and the Moon. The Earth (a globe) sat in the bottom of the box. The Sun was simply a flashlight that was stuck through a hole in the side of the box. Finally, the moon was a styrofoam ball on a string. Using the box and these three objects, students were able to explore the interaction that happens between these objects as they move throughout the solar system...specifically as the Moon orbits the Earth.

As if viewing the phases as we moved our Moon around the box wasn't enough, we decided to enhance our experience using technology. Not only did students perform the actions necessary to make the Lunar Cycle observable, but as we moved our Moon, we also took pictures of each phase. When we had completed these pictures we put them together in an app called iStopMotion where we created a stop motion film displaying the phases of the lunar cycle in a continuous stream. All of these actions helped solidify the students' understanding of how and why the lunar cycle occurs as well as their knowledge of the phases themselves.

Click below to view a sample of our stop motion film and see the phases in motion.