Oreo Moon Phases Lesson for Kids

This Oreo moon phases lesson for kids is hands-down the most fun way to teach kids moon phases! Hands-on learning meets a tasty treat in this unforgettable moon phases lesson!

Oreo Moon Phases Lesson for Kids

Moon phases are an excellent introduction to astronomy for young kids, but an important astronomy topic for everyone. This lesson using Oreos (or any chocolate sandwich cookies! We used the Simple Truth brand and it worked just fine) makes learning and memorizing the names of the different moon phases unforgettable!

What are the Moon Phases?

There are 8 moon phases, but you can teach the lesson with just one chocolate sandwich cookie per learner. I prefer to have the kids make multiple phases so they can line them up – I’ll share more about this further down!

Before we get into the specific phases, I always talk to my learners about waxing and waning. Waxing is the term for when the moon appears to be growing. Waning is the term for when the moon appears to be getting smaller.

While eating the cookie filling does make it seem like the moon is shrinking and growing every night, it’s worth taking a moment to explain to the kids that we are making a picture with the cookies of what the moon looks like.

The moon doesn’t change, only how much we see of it! As the moon orbits Earth, our view of the moon changes a little bit each night.

Now let’s start making moon phases!

How To Make Oreo Moon Phases

Explain to your student(s) that we’re going to make the moon phases out of our Oreos and don’t eat the whole thing at once! You can either make multiple phases out of one cookie, or have the children make multiple moon phases and line them up at the end!

Since my older boys had already done this lesson when they were younger, I gave them each a waxing (growing) moon phase to make and had my youngest child use one cookie to go through all of the waning phases, but then make one of each of the waxing phases.

Full Moon

First up, we will make a full moon!

Start with a whole chocolate sandwich cookie, and carefully pull it apart in a way that leaves all of the white filling attached to one side.

I’ve found that gently twisting one side of the Oreo (or other chocolate sandwich cookie!) usually does the trick.

Ta-da! You’ve got a full moon! Reinforce this to your child that a whole, round moon is a full moon. At this point I usually let my child eat the side of the cookie that doesn’t have any filling left!

Waning Gibbous Moon

When our view of the moon is shrinking, we call that “waning.”

Next we use our teeth (kids love this part!) to scrape off a bit of the filling. Not enough to make a half moon, but right in-between a full moon and half moon.

Since we are making the moon get smaller, this is called a waning gibbous moon.

Waning Half Moon

Next, we will scrape off a little more – just enough to have half of the filling remain.

This is a waning half moon. Remind your child that it is waning because the moon appears to be growing smaller.

Waning Crescent Moon

Now it’s time to make the moon appear smaller again!

Scrape off another bit of filling until the moon is a crescent. Now we’ve made a waning crescent moon!

New Moon

Finally, we’ll make a new moon by scraping off all the rest of the filling! You did it – you made all of the waning moon phases!

More Oreo Moon Phase Ideas

If you’d like to continue the lesson further, you can have students make multiple phases and arrange them to be getting smaller, waning. Then you can have them arrange the cookie phases getting larger – and talk about how when the moon appears to be growing from our view, we call it “waxing”.

Arrange the moon phase cookies from new moon, to waxing crescent, waxing half moon, and waxing gibbous, all the way to full moon and have your student(s) name each one!

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Oreo Moon Phases Lesson for Kids