Let us explain days and nights to kids sometime. By the time the children are four year old, they mostly understand when is the morning, noon, evening and night.
Step 1 - Learn about the Earth
I love to explain this to Dhanya with a globe. We first started off by familiarizing her with the fact that the globe is in fact the Earth. And we all live in the Earth.
Many schools teach simple rhymes about the contents . Here is one I found on the web.
The 7 Continents
North America, South America, joined in the West
Europe meets with Asia, and on Africa they rest.
Australia stands alone, floating down below
And Antarctica is the loneliest, where no one want to go.
Since she already knew a rhyme about all the continents, I showed her where each continent lies on the globe. Then, We tried to relate these continents to real world people.
' Father has gone to USA. Here is the USA in North America continent.'
' My sister lives in Australia. Australia is here in my globe.'
'All the blue colour in the globe are vast oceans'.
Step 2 - Learn about the rotations and revolution
It is good to show the kids how the rotation and the revolution of earth happens before proceeding to talk about days and nights. As I mentioned elsewhere, long back when these concepts were explained to me in school, Our science teacher put a chair in the middle of the class - Asked us to assume it to be the sun and went around it as the earth would, showing us rotation and resolution. It is good to do this exercise with the kids.
Step 3 - Learn about the days and nights on Earth
Once the child is familiar with the rotation and revolution, We need ,
It is a nice exercise to repeat this experiment several times, probably once every two weeks. The child's understanding of the concept of day and night strengtens.
Why is it morning now ? "Because the there is light" .
Where does the light come from "From the sun".
What happens in the night " The sun goes away".
But where does it go ?
Step 1 - Learn about the Earth
I love to explain this to Dhanya with a globe. We first started off by familiarizing her with the fact that the globe is in fact the Earth. And we all live in the Earth.
Many schools teach simple rhymes about the contents . Here is one I found on the web.
The 7 Continents
North America, South America, joined in the West
Europe meets with Asia, and on Africa they rest.
Australia stands alone, floating down below
And Antarctica is the loneliest, where no one want to go.
Since she already knew a rhyme about all the continents, I showed her where each continent lies on the globe. Then, We tried to relate these continents to real world people.
' Father has gone to USA. Here is the USA in North America continent.'
' My sister lives in Australia. Australia is here in my globe.'
'All the blue colour in the globe are vast oceans'.
Step 2 - Learn about the rotations and revolution
It is good to show the kids how the rotation and the revolution of earth happens before proceeding to talk about days and nights. As I mentioned elsewhere, long back when these concepts were explained to me in school, Our science teacher put a chair in the middle of the class - Asked us to assume it to be the sun and went around it as the earth would, showing us rotation and resolution. It is good to do this exercise with the kids.
Once the child is familiar with the rotation and revolution, We need ,
- A globe
- A torch
- A darkened room
It is a nice exercise to repeat this experiment several times, probably once every two weeks. The child's understanding of the concept of day and night strengtens.
- Point to various parts of the globe and ask if it would be day or night there.
- Encourage the kids to talk to friends and relatives in various parts of the globe. The child could ask the friend if it is day or night there and can further cross check with the globe. They could even show them if it is day or night outside on a video chat.
Some advanced topics to cover -
- Why do we have various seasons ?
- Why is the size of the moon different on different days ?
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