We came up with this simple craft that is both engaging and exciting. It’s basically a learning tool to help students of all ages learn about the phases of the moon.

We created the viewer with recycled household materials by using a paper roll to create this educational moon phase viewer.

You can decorate your moon viewer with stickers and paint, or even wooden disks that you paint each moon phase onto, Use a paint splatter technique to create the stars. The creativity is up to you, or copy our design.

You can use a popsicle stick or any stick you find outside on the ground to attach a moon onto. Make a black round circle forr the moon or draw an accurate version. We printed a photo of the moon onto one of our moon sticks, and used a black circle as well.

The longer paper rolls allow you to decorate it with sayings and moon phases better because there is more room. The small toilet paper rolls are easy to handle and are more portable. Make different sizes or create whichever size you have available in your house.

The pink moon is made from air drying clay and is attached to a sting,

Check out this video of the moon phase viewer in action!

Materials:

For the paper Roll:

1. Recycled Paper Roll - from a toilet paper or paper towel roll

2. Black, white, blue and purple washable paint for younger children, we used nontoxic Acrylic Paint.

3. Paint brushes

4. Jar of water to clean brushes

5. Any star or moon stickers you wish to add to your paper roll. We painted round wooden discs into the moon phases.

For the Moon:

1. Black Construction Paper or a cutout Moon

2. A pencil

3. A popsicle stick

4. A glue stick or school glue

Steps:

There is no set way to paint your moon phases paper roll. Decorate and Paint your paper roll however you’d like. You can draw on it and add stickers. We painted ours black for the night sky and splattered white paint for the stars. We added hints of purple and blue here and there to give it that galaxy look.

For two of the paper rolls we glued on wooden disks, after painting them each a different moon phase, from the 8 lunar phases.

1. New moon

2. Waxing Crescent

3. First Quarter

4. Waxing Gibbous

5. Full moon

6. Waning Gibbous

7. Last Quarter

8. Waning Crescent

We have a few free Moon phases printables to help you with this project if you need any reference material.

For more ideas: we decorated one with paper that Charlotte painted like a galaxy and wrote the words, “love you to the moon and back”. Then wrapped the paper around the paper roll. We hung a clay half moon to the roll using string. It looked super cute!

Now it’s time to make the popsicle stick moon that will move back and fourth in front of the paper roll hole.

steps:

1. Using black construction or cardstock paper, trace the circle of the paper roll so that you make your moon a similar size to the hole opening.

2. Cut out the circle shape.

3. Glue it to a popsicle stick.

Now you are ready to practice the moon phases on your painted paper roll. Move the popsicle-stick back and fourth over the opening at the end while you look through the paper roll and make the moon phases appear!

Download and print our Lunar monthly chart to record the moon phases each day of the month! It only has 30 sections, so use the middle moon for the first or last day if there are 31 days in the month.

- go to the main menu and click on printables.

Moon Phase viewer by Acorns and Aprons.

We hope you have fun creating this Acorns and Aprons original moon phases craft.

Feel free to tag use on Instagram @acorns.and.aprons if you create this craft, and we may feature it as a story!