A sky journal for a month

What you need

The Moon journal sheet from the Moon calendar page, a pencil, and two minutes a night. A clipboard by the back door helps. Start any night; the Moon calendar shows which phase you are starting on, so you know what to expect.

What to draw and write

Shade the dark part of the Moon so the white part is the lit part. Write the date under it, the time, and one word for where it was: east, south, west, high, low. If it's cloudy, draw a cloud and leave it. If the Moon isn't up in the evening, that's an entry too: around new Moon and in the week after full, it simply isn't there at bedtime.

1. Same time each night if you can.
2. Shade, then write date, time and direction.
3. Cloudy or missing? Draw that too.

What children notice

Most children see three things by the end of the month. The lit part grows and then shrinks. At the same time each evening the Moon is in a different place, farther east each night. And for a week or so after full Moon it vanishes from the evening altogether, because it is rising later and later.

Those are the same three facts astronomers use to explain the Moon's orbit, found with a pencil.

Going further

Add a planet: Sky Tonight's card names the brightest one up after dark, and the Moon passes close to it once a month. Or add a page from Tonight's sheet on the night of a meteor shower. Seven Nights of Sky turns a week of the journal into a Sky Week stamp in the Activity Book.

For a class

A teacher can run the journal as a class project: each child keeps a sheet at home for a month and the class compares drawings every Friday. Children who drew on cloudy nights can borrow a classmate's drawing for that date, which makes the point that the Moon looked the same to everyone in town. The Moon calendar's month pages show the four phase dates to check against, and the Moon shapes quiz is a good end-of-month review.