Take a Plain 8 1/2 Sheet of Paper.
Fold it in half, width wise, then from the highest point, measure down just over an inch and a half.
Fold down to this line, and match the fold into seven equal parts.
Number each block from one to the last block, in a small corner.
Each of these boxes will represent a day of the week. Start the project with the first of the month, and continue the project for one lunar month.
Each student is to look outside on clear nights, and draw the phase of the moon under the appropriate day, and continue this nightly log for the entire Lunar month. If it is cloudy, in small letters, mark cloudy at the top of the box.
Question every student what they saw last night, check the project daily as it progresses. Draw a small box on the chalk board, and draw what the moon looked like.
When you have current events, encourage the weather boxes, and bring to the students attention the phases of the moon boxes that they see in the daily news paper. Post these pages on your classroom bulletin board.
At the last day of the lunar month, have the students look at each day marked cloudy, and extrapolate, or predict how the picture should look like in the missing box.
Ask the children what other logs can be used with this same type of method, (Weather, changing seasons, flowers - annuals and perennials, Sun spots, Daily news events, etc.) Brain storm new ideas, and allow them to choose their own projects, and have them carry them out. This shows the joy of record keeping over a period of time, and what we can learn from these activities. It is a pictorial journal, and may increase the natural progression to journal writing, and you may want to integrate pictorial journal writing in their regular journals. This type of visual thinking is important, curriculum oriented, and needs to be encouraged in young minds.