 Do your visitors think moon phases are caused by Earth's shadow? Do they look at Venus in your telescope and say, looks like the moon? Do you want an easy way to explain why eclipses don't happen every month? This first series of activities and demos called Shadows in Space, Phases in Eclipses, can help your visitors understand basic phenomena related to shadows. In the activity bag, you'll find a bag labeled moon phases and Earth's shadow. It contains eclipsed shades, a couple of earth balloons, and some one inch polystyrene balls and sticks. Assemble them like this. These represent the moon. Loose in the toolkit box, you'll find a four inch ball to represent the Earth. To change the plain white four inch ball into the Earth, cut the bottom off one of the earth balloons. Stretch it over the ball like you would put on a swim cap. Insert this stick into the Earth. This Earth and one of the one inch balls provides you with the scaled sizes of the Earth and the moon. Now here's what you'll need to make a couple of suns for some of the demos. Snake lights, a pack of AAA batteries, and ping pong balls with holes in them. Pull the hood off the snake light. Line up the hole in the ping pong ball and press it over the bulb. Insert the batteries and turn it on here. You'll also need these lights with the transits activity bag. You'll need this stick of sticky wax to put the following two models together. A bag labeled can you make any clips contains a bead for the moon, a ball for the Earth, pins and binder clips attached to a folded yard stick. These make a scale model of the sizes of Earth and moon and distance between them. To make it, insert the pin into the moon bead. Take a tiny patch of sticky wax and press it under the bead. Put another tiny pinch into the top of the wood bead Earth and insert the stick. Press more sticky wax under the wood bead. Clip the moon and Earth beads 30 inches apart on the yard stick. So where should I put mine? 34. And you've got your scale model. I'll show you how you can use it outside while the sun is in the sky to demonstrate eclipses. This bag labeled why don't eclipses happen every month contains beads, clear discs, washers, pins and sticks and white cards. From these parts you're going to make four Earth moon systems. Put one of the half balls with the felt pad on it and place one of the washers in the middle. It's got to be in the middle. Take a pinch of the sticky wax and completely fill the center of the washer with it up to the top. Place one of the clear discs over the washer and squeeze a ball half, one without the felt pad, down over it. Then push the stick into the hole in the bottom of the Earth. Take another small pinch of the sticky wax and place it on the edge of the clear disc. You can either attach the moon directly or attach the pin to the moon bead using sticky wax like you did for the yard stick model. Push the moon pin into the sticky wax. Now you have a moon that orbits the Earth. Make a vertical mark on the Earth on the high side of the orbit with a marking pin. Make the other three the same way. If you prefer you can supply craft glue to assemble the items. You'll see how to use these shortly. All the assembly instructions and where you can get more materials are listed in the toolkit manual on the manual and resources CD. Now let's see what we can do with all this.