What do you get when you mix together the Phases of the Moon, Oreo Cookies, and Animated GIFs?? FUN! Today I was able to hang out with Mrs. Coor’s class at Echo Lake Elementary. Her class is learning about the Moon Phases. After teaching 3rd graders for 7 years, using Oreo Cookies to explain the phases of the moon has always been one of my favorite things to do.
The first thing we did as a class is reviewed and drew the six main phases the students need to know: New Moon, Waxing Crescent, First Quarter, Full Moon, Last (Third) Quarter, Waning Crescent, back to New Moon. After reviewing, I showed the students my Moon Phases GIF example:
The students became all kinds of pumped when we pulled out the Oreos and toothpicks. Using Photo Booth, The students took six pictures of their Oreos representing the six phases. We used the toothpicks to cut into the cream filling to make the crescent and quarter moons. This part of the project is the hardest because those cookies just want to keep breaking, and then to get rid of them, we obviously had to eat them!
Once all the students took all their pictures, we quit Photo Booth and used the website GifGear. All the students had to do was click the “Add Pictures” button and add the pictures. The coolest thing about this website is that students can easily move the pictures around in the order they want them. Once finished ordering, we clicked the download button and saved them to our class folder. Check these out!
