Kitten's First Full Moon

Last week my students read the story, "Kitten's First Full Moon" in their anthologies. What a CUTE story! The kitten sees the moon and thinks it's a bowl of milk. He tries again and again to get the bowl of milk to no avail. But in the end, there is a nice bowl of milk waiting for him at home.

Since my school is a magnet school for art, math, science, and technology, I decided to incorporate the science and art portion into the lesson. In our Treasures anthologies and leveled readers, the topic is space. We talked about the moon and read about some astronauts (as well as astronaut food). We talked about how when the moon is with us, the sun is on the other side of Earth. We talked about the different shapes of the moon (a little bit of math there) and what we can/can't do at night.

I gave each student a scratch board. Now, if you aren't familiar with these, they are AMAZING. I've been using them for years and even entered a few pieces in the county fair growing up. Basically, it looks like a giant scratcher lotto ticket. But when you scratch, there is color underneath. I've used some that are white or silver underneath. This particular packet was multicolored.

Since the package only came with six scratch pencils, I improvised and used popsicle sticks. This worked well. It took a little bit for the kids to get used to it. So we started with drawing the moon first.  We then made a cityscape. Here is one student's rendition:

Since we took a field trip to San Francisco a few months back, my students were excited when I mentioned we would also draw a bridge. Many of them said they were drawing the Golden Gate as they reminisced driving over it in the bus:

Overall, it was a fun lesson and the kids were engaged and excited. I still have a package of scratchboard left and can't wait to plan our next lesson using them!