Our Amazing Planet
Rhythms of nature
Explain what makes day turn into night, read a globe, and name and order the six Indian seasons and the festivals that go with them.
Some changes take years — you grow taller, a friend's hair grows out. Some take a few days: flowers bloom, dry up and bloom again. And some take minutes: the sky changes colour, the Sun goes down. The world is changing around you the whole time, and a good deal of that change comes round again and again in the same order.
The Sun is not the one moving
It looks as though the Sun rises in the east, crosses the sky and sets in the west. Put a globe on a table, shine a torch at one side of it and turn the globe slowly: the light stays where it is and the globe carries each part into the light and out again. The side the light falls on has day; the side with no light has night. The Sun stays put, and it is the Earth that rotates.
Reading a globe
A globe is a model of the Earth, shaped like a ball just as the Earth is. The blue on it is the seas and oceans, which cover about three-fourth part of the planet. Seas are usually smaller than oceans and are partly closed in by land; oceans are vast and open. What is not blue is the land masses, where the countries are.
Six seasons, in order
Weather warms up, gets hot, then it rains, then it cools before warming again — and it does this year after year. That repeating pattern is what we call seasons. In India there are six of them: Vasanta (spring), Grishma (summer), Varsha (monsoon), Sharad (autumn), Hemant (pre-winter) and Shishir (winter).
Have a play
A torch shining on a globe, the way the class set it up.
Tap any part of the picture.
Worked example
One student is the Sun and stands still in the middle. Another is the Earth and turns slowly on the spot. What is the game showing?
The Earth student says "day … day … day" for as long as they can see the Sun student.
Facing the Sun is the whole of what having daylight means. Nothing about the Sun changed while they said it.
Try it together
Work out how much of a globe is water and what the rest of it is.
Take a globe off the shelf and look at it without reading any of the writing on it.
1.One colour covers more of the globe than any other. Which colour is it?
Have a go
Have a go on your own. In Odisha, farmers hear one bird sing and know the rains are on the way, so they start planting seeds. Which bird is it?
Ready to practise?
Eight questions on what you have just read. Nothing is timed, and you can play as many times as you like.