Do you know of any online resources to help explain the Moon’s cycles?

Every month the moon goes through 8 phases:

lunar-phases

Looking at the 8 individual phases helps to understand what happens:

800px-phases_of_the_moon

These are the following 8 phases of the Moon: New Moon, Waxing Crescent, First Quarter, Waxing Gibbous, Full Moon, Waning Gibbous, Last Quarter, and Waning Crescent.

Watching a fast forward movie of the 8 phases that occur also helps:

Finally, this is a nifty moon phases application to experiment with made by 8th grade students at Peabody School.

Last but not least, don’t forget to read these two wonderful books while studying the phases of the Moon:

papamoon1many-moons1