• 60 prompts
  • Checked October 2026

Moon Writing Prompts

A walk under it, a house on it, a diary of its phases, a legend you make up.

Moon Writing Prompts

Show all 60
  1. You are the first kid to step onto the Moon. Write your first sentence and why you chose it.Fact: the Moon is the only world beyond Earth that people have visited so far.
  2. The Moon and the ocean were best friends who had to live apart. Write the Moon legend.First line: They still wave to each other, twice a day.
  3. The gibbous Moon is more than half, not yet full, and tired of waiting. Write its diary entry.Fact: at waxing gibbous, most of the Moon's day side has come into view.

Next step Draw your Moon basePaint the Sun and the Moon

All 60 prompts

A night walk 15

  • The dark part of a crescent Moon glows faintly in the evening sky. Write your guess at what lights it, then the real answer. Fact: sunlight reflected off Earth dimly lights the dark part of a crescent Moon. It is called earthshine.
  • Describe the full Moon rising over a place you know: a roof, a hill, a parking lot. Fact: a full Moon rises around sunset and sets around sunrise.
  • Describe the Moon's reflection in a puddle, a pond or a window, and what breaks it. Angle: a foot, a fish, a raindrop, a cat.
  • Go outside tonight, find the Moon and write exactly what you see. Angle: its shape, how high it is, what color it is, and what is next to it.
  • Look at the full Moon and write what its dark patches look like to you. Fact: the dark areas, called maria, are old impact basins that filled with lava long ago.
  • Make a list poem: things the full Moon lights up on your street. Angle: end on the smallest thing.
  • The Moon follows the car all the way home. Write the ride as a little kid in the back seat. First line: It was behind the trees, and then it was behind the trees again.
  • Take a moonlit walk with someone who knows the names of things in the sky. Write what they tell you. First line: "That one is not a star," she said, and I waited to be told what it was.
  • Walk along a beach at night and write what the Moon is doing to the water. Fact: the pull of the Moon's gravity is the main cause of the ocean's tides.
  • Walk home under a full Moon bright enough to give you a shadow, and write the walk. Fact: the Moon makes no light of its own. Moonlight is reflected sunlight.
  • Write about a night with no Moon at all. Fact: at new Moon the side facing Earth is unlit, and the Moon rises and sets with the Sun.
  • Write about a tide pool at low tide, and what the Moon will do to it in six hours. Fact: one cycle from high tide to the next high tide takes a little over 12 hours.
  • Write about seeing the Moon in the daytime and what you thought it was doing there. Fact: the Moon is often visible during the day as a faint, pale shape.
  • Write the Moon as three people see it on the same night: a baker, a sailor and a kid who cannot sleep. Angle: one paragraph each. Only one of them is glad to see it.
  • Write the tide coming in under the Moon as a slow race between the water and a sandcastle. Fact: most shores have two high tides and two low tides a day.

Living on the Moon 15

  • Describe one day and one night on the Moon to someone who has lived only on Earth. Fact: the Moon spins around once in about 27 Earth days.
  • Give tomorrow's weather forecast for the Moon. Fact: the Moon reaches about 260 degrees Fahrenheit in full Sun and about minus 280 in darkness.
  • Invent a sport that only works on the Moon and write the report of the first game. Angle: how high does the ball go, and how long does everyone wait for it?
  • Moon dust gets everywhere. Write the complaint of the person who has to sweep the Moon base. Fact: nearly the whole Moon is covered in charcoal-gray, powdery dust and rocky rubble.
  • Pack for a month on the Moon. Write the list, and defend the one silly thing on it. Angle: you may bring one thing that is no use at all.
  • Send a letter home from the Moon about how Earth looks in your window. Fact: the Moon is about 239,000 miles from Earth.
  • Write about living on the far side of the Moon, the side that never faces Earth. Fact: the same side of the Moon always faces Earth; the far side was first seen in 1959.
  • Write about one small thing from Earth that you miss while you live on the Moon. Angle: rain on a window, a dog barking, the smell of cut grass.
  • Write an ad for a hotel on the Moon. First line: Every room has a view. It is the same view. You will not get tired of it.
  • Write the diary of a footprint left on the Moon in 1969. Fact: people first walked on the Moon on July 20, 1969. The Moon has no wind and no liquid water.
  • Write the rules for the first school on the Moon. Fact: the Moon's atmosphere is very thin and is not breathable.
  • Write the search for water near the Moon's south pole, as the driver of the rover. Fact: ice has been found in craters at the Moon's poles that are always in shadow.
  • Write your first morning in a house on the Moon. Fact: gravity on the Moon is one-sixth of Earth's, so people walking there seem almost to bounce.
  • You are the first kid to step onto the Moon. Write your first sentence and why you chose it. Fact: the Moon is the only world beyond Earth that people have visited so far.
  • You find something astronauts left behind on the Moon. Write what it is and what you do with it. Fact: astronauts left equipment, American flags and even a camera on the Moon.

The phases as a diary 15

  • A waxing crescent Moon keeps a diary. Write its entry for the first thin sliver after the dark. Fact: a waxing crescent grows daily, and every day the Moon rises a little later.
  • Draw the Moon every clear night for two weeks, then write what changed and what you guessed wrong. Angle: on which night did you first notice it had moved?
  • Explain the phases of the Moon to a friend who thinks a piece of it goes missing. Fact: the Sun always lights half the Moon; how much of that half we see changes as the Moon orbits.
  • The gibbous Moon is more than half, not yet full, and tired of waiting. Write its diary entry. Fact: at waxing gibbous, most of the Moon's day side has come into view.
  • Keep a Moon diary for one month: one line a night on the Moon's shape and where it is. Fact: the Moon goes through its phases about once a month, every 29.5 days.
  • Match a mood to each phase of the Moon and write one month as a list of moods. Angle: is the new Moon shy, resting or hiding?
  • Tell a story that lasts one cycle of the Moon, with a scene at each of four phases. Angle: new, first quarter, full, third quarter. Something grows and something shrinks.
  • Write a third quarter Moon's diary entry, seen by the first person awake in town. Fact: a third quarter Moon rises around the middle of the night and sets around midday.
  • Write a waning Moon's diary entry on a night it rises too late for most people to see. Fact: after full Moon, the Moon rises later and later each night.
  • Write the diary of someone who fishes from the shore and plans the week by the phase of the Moon. Fact: the highest tides, called spring tides, come at full Moon and at new Moon.
  • Write the eight phases of the Moon as eight diary entries, in the Moon's own voice. Fact: new Moon, waxing crescent, first quarter, waxing gibbous, full, waning gibbous, third quarter, waning crescent.
  • Write the first quarter Moon's complaint about being called a half Moon. Fact: at first quarter we see half of the lit half of the Moon.
  • Write the full Moon's diary entry, when everyone is looking. Fact: at full Moon, the Moon is opposite the Sun in the sky and we see its day side.
  • Write the new Moon's diary entry: the night nobody sees it. Fact: at new Moon the lit side faces the Sun and the night side faces Earth.
  • Write the same backyard twice: once at new Moon and once at full Moon. Angle: what can you find in one that you cannot find in the other?

A moon legend of your own 15

  • A child borrows the Moon for one night. Write the legend. Angle: what was it needed for, and what happened to the tides?
  • Explain in a legend of your own why owls call at the Moon. Angle: what are they asking it for?
  • Invent a festival held at every full Moon in a town you make up, and write its rules. Angle: one food, one game, one thing nobody is allowed to do.
  • Invent a legend that explains why the Moon changes shape. Angle: who takes the pieces, and who puts them back?
  • Invent the creature that lives on the far side of the Moon, where nobody on Earth can look. Fact to bend: people on Earth only ever see one side of the Moon.
  • Invent the job of the person who lights the Moon each night, and write the night they overslept. Fact to bend: the real Moon does not shine by itself. It reflects the Sun.
  • Make up a name for each full Moon of the year in your own town, and write why. Angle: name them for what happens here: the first-snow Moon, the last-day-of-school Moon.
  • Make up a story about why the Moon follows the Sun across the sky but never catches it. Angle: are they racing, hiding or taking turns?
  • Make up the story of how the Moon was made, as a grandmother tells it at bedtime. Fact to bend: the Moon likely formed after a Mars-sized body collided with Earth billions of years ago.
  • The Moon and the ocean were best friends who had to live apart. Write the Moon legend. First line: They still wave to each other, twice a day.
  • The Moon once hung much closer, and someone pushed it away. Write that legend. Fact to bend: the real Moon moves about an inch farther from Earth each year.
  • Tell a legend of your own about how the Moon got its dark patches. First line: Before the spill, the Moon was as plain as a plate.
  • Why can the Moon sometimes be seen in the daytime? Answer with a legend of your own. Angle: is it lost, early, or checking on someone?
  • Write a legend about the first tide: the day the sea began to follow the Moon. Angle: what did the Moon promise the sea?
  • Write a Moon legend twice: once as the Moon would tell it, once as the Sun would. Angle: they do not agree on who was late.

How it works

These writing prompts about the Moon treat it as a place to stand and as a clock in the sky. Many carry a NASA fact: what pulls the tide, why a crescent's dark part glows, how cold lunar night gets.

Read the full guide

A moon phases writing prompt for each night

Fifteen prompts turn the month into a diary. The first quarter complains about being called a half Moon, the gibbous Moon is tired of waiting, and the third quarter is seen by the first person awake in town. The fact under most entries says what part is lit or when that phase rises.

A legend of your own

The legend prompts ask for a new story and not an old one retold: who takes the pieces of the Moon and who puts them back, what the Moon promised the sea. Four hand over a real fact to bend.

  • Look before you write. One minute outside gives you the Moon's shape, its height and what is beside it.
  • A diary entry in the Moon's voice needs a mood. Decide if tonight's Moon is proud, shy or bored.

Questions and answers

What is a phases of the moon writing prompt?

A prompt that uses the changing shape as its subject or its calendar. Write the eight phases as eight diary entries in the Moon's own voice, or a story that lasts one cycle with a scene at each of four phases.

What are the phases of the Moon in order?

New Moon, waxing crescent, first quarter, waxing gibbous, full Moon, waning gibbous, third quarter and waning crescent. NASA gives the cycle as about 29.5 days.

Why does the Moon cause tides?

The Moon's gravity pulls on Earth's oceans, and the water bulges on the side closest to the Moon and on the side farthest from it. As Earth turns, most shores pass through both bulges, which gives two high tides a day.

Are these moon writing prompts for kids?

Yes. A kid in a back seat watches the Moon follow the car home, the first school on the Moon needs rules, and a child borrows the Moon for one night.

More tools

Show 8 more

Browse Writing Prompts