Oreo Cookie Moon Phases Lab

Last week, I promised my very difficult, out of control 8th grade class a lab activity if they would be quiet and pass a Moon Phases quiz.


Well, they weren't exactly super quiet, but for the 20 kids that passed the quiz... they were able to participate in the Oreo Cookie Moon Phase Lab.

The lab went surprisingly okay... as okay as it can be for a troubled 8th grade group of almost ALL BOYS.  (Honestly, when they put this group of kids together, someone should of slapped somebody because you can't get a worse group of troublemakers together.)

I found a great worksheet to use with the Moon Phase Lab, but if you google Oreo Cookie Moon Phases Worksheet - you'll have a lot of options to choose from that will fit your class/curriculum/etc.  I made my students partner up and gave each student four oreo cookies... this way I could save some money and buy a few less oreos.  Each partner had to make half of the moon phases with their cookies, then check their partner's work and copy over what they made on to their final paper.

I had my students use toothpicks for the scraping because that seemed like the easiest and handiest tool to use.

Final Thoughts?  It was a good lab, I would refrigerate the cookies before hand because as you can tell from this picture, the frosting gets pretty nasty by the end.  My students were very happy because they got to eat the cookies at the end (except, they expected me to buy them milk too!) and they were able to finally stop complaining about the lack of labs in my class.