Night of the Moon

Free lesson plan, writing template and printable word-search puzzles for kids

night of the moon

Best suited to:

K – Year 4

KLAs covered:

English, HASS

Learning:

  • people from different cultural backgrounds have different celebrations and traditions;
  • Ramadan is a special month for Muslim people when they celebrate with friends and family;
  • the month of Ramadan begins when the new moon appears;
  • adults and older children fast all day during Ramadan and everyone has a big party at night with wonderful food;
  • families say prayers, help people and give gifts during Ramadan;
  • Eid is a special celebration that happens on the day after Ramadan ends;

Need to know:

  • the story is told through the eyes of a 7-year-old Pakistani-American girl called Yasmeen who lives in the US with her parents and her little brother, Bilal;
  • the beautiful illustrations evoke Islamic art, with shades of green, blue, gold and silver predominating;
  • Yasmeen’s teacher leads a classroom discussion about Ramadan;
  • the author is a Pakistani-American Muslim who was born and raised in Maryland, USA;
  • there is a glossary and and explanatory note about Ramadan at the back of the book;

Discussion Questions (before reading):

  • discuss the cover and title: what do you see? What do you think the book will be about?
  • for younger children (K-Year 2): point out the author’s name and discuss the terms ‘author’ and ‘illustrator’;
  • write the word celebrate on the classroom whiteboard and ask the children: what are some special times of the year when we celebrate? What kinds of things do we do when we celebrate? Brainstorm as a class and record the answers on the classroom whiteboard;
  • write the word Ramadan on the classroom whiteboard and tell the children: this book is about a special celebration called Ramadan;

Discussion Questions (after reading):

  • ask children what they thought about of the book. Did they like it? Not like it? Why? Which was their favourite page;
  • why did Yasmeen look forward to Ramadan?

Activities

  • children complete a wordsearch using vocabulary from the story;
  • children write and/or draw a response to the story;

Free, printable word-search puzzles

These free printable word-search puzzles for kids are great for building and reinforcing the vocabulary used when you’re discussing Night of the Moon. 

There are three different puzzles in this file to enable you to differentiate the activity according to the needs of your students.

Free writing template

You can download and print our free writing template for use with Night of the Moon here (PDF).

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