The Moon

The Moon

The Moon
Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 5 to 7
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	5.74

Vocabulary

	challenging words:		celestial, happening, periodic, atmosphere, gravity, revolution, satellite, rotation, opposite, medium, lunar, natural, attraction, radio, matches, phase
	content words:		Neil Armstrong, Since Earth

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The Moon
By Cindy Grigg

¹     From the time you were very young, you looked up in the sky and saw the moon. When you were little, you may have thought the moon "followed" you if you were in a car going somewhere. The moon does move, but it doesn't follow cars.

²     The moon goes around or orbits the Earth, just as Earth orbits the sun. The phases of the moon are caused by the positions of the Earth, sun, and moon. The moon orbits the earth in 27 days, 7 hours, 43 minutes. That's almost four weeks, and we see four phases of the moon. Each phase lasts about one week each.

³     You may have heard people refer to the moon as either "waxing" or "waning." Waxing means that it is growing fuller, and waning means that it is moving from full to smaller. The sun always lights up the side of the moon facing the sun. When the sun and moon are on opposite sides of the earth, the moon appears "full" to us, a bright, round circle. When the moon is between Earth and the sun, it is dark. We call this a "new" moon. In between, the moon's illuminated surface appears to grow (waxes) to full, then decreases (wanes) to the next new moon.

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