Take the children outside on clear nights to look at the moon. Give them small books with blank pages — you can make them yourself by stapling — and have them draw the moon, with the date and time. Over the course of a month, observe together how the moon changes shapes, while pointing out that this a regular cycle that repeats about once a month. Also take opportunities to find the moon during day. Usually, the only moon cycle that can’t be seen during the day is a full moon.
For an edible lesson, use Oreos or another round sandwich-style cookie to replicate the phases of the moon. Open the cookies up, and scrape off the filling in shapes that resemble the phases of the moon. Before you eat your moon phases, make sure you place them in the right order and talk about each one.
The Internet has some fine videos that show and explain the phases of the moon. One on the Newton’s Apple website is designed for kids and provides a graphic illustration of how the rotation of the moon around the earth produces the phases that they can see. You can replicate it in your home using a lamp and a ball, with your children in the Earth’s position in the center of the room.
If you’re teaching a classroom full of kids, assign each child a paper plate and a moon viewing date. On that day, the child is to go outside and draw the moon as it appears, on the plate by coloring black the portion she can’t see. Send them out about every other night for at least two weeks so they can observe a clear change. Tape the plates to the wall in the classroom in their order, and see if they can predict what the next plate will look like.