Time & Moons

Within our time unit in math, students study the months of the year, days per month, create their own calendars, answer questions, make comparisons, and more.  We talk about how we use the traditional Gregorian calendar - 12 months in a year with specific days per month.  When looking to incorporate FNMI content into this area of math, I chose to do so with using moon cycles.

Students and I talked about how FNMI groups did not use the calendar we are currently familiar with to tell time as per months, days of the week, etc.  Instead, they used their own methods of time measurement.  One of these was using the moons (new, full, quarter).  Sometimes FNMI would refer to "the next full moon" or "two moons away", etc.  As we discussed this concept, students looked at how moons are represented on the Gregorian calendar and for this we each had our own calendar page (I'm a stickler for keeping old calendars for art and found that they came in super handy for this unit in math as well).

First, we looked at how the moons are represented on a calendar.  Then we noted when a new or full moon was and how this didn't always coincide with the first day of the Gregorian calendar.  Next, we compared how long it was from one moon to the next (ie. full moon to full moon).  For this, we used calendars copied onto legal paper with four months so they could compare and see that moon to moon differed from our traditional "month to month".

Students found that there are 28 or 29 days in between moons.  We then talked about how this was different from the calendar we use today.  It was great to see students make various observations such as it's a shorter time span between moons than months, they start in different places (part of the month, day of the week).  When we discussed why there would be 28 or 29 days in between moons, and not a consistent number, students were quick to note it was because some months had 30 days and others had 31.

We concluded the lesson by reading a tale from Keepers of the Earth, Native Stories and Environmental Activities for Children by Caduto, Michael J. and Bruchac, Joseph.  The tale "How Coyote Was the Moon" talked about how the people needed a moon, because it was so dark, and someone had stolen the previous moon so they were looking for a new one.  Coyote volunteered however his nosiness resulted in him not continuing to be the moon, and another one eventually chosen.   This tale was a great way to bridge the concepts while including literacy into mathematics.  This book also has other tales that work well with various math units.