Seasons South and North

EARTH DAY

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of Earth Day, an annual celebration on the 22nd of April. It is a day when people everywhere show how much they care for this place where we live. There is not another one like it. It is our treasure.

The Earth Day network has grown from a quasi-hippie group to an international organization of scientists, teachers, business groups and governments determined to work together to protect and preserve our planet. Their website has a section on how to make a school more ecological. They also sponsor and support a number of ecology projects around the world.

Learn More About the Earth

Visit these sites from NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab which are designed for children:

Climate Kids

Space Place, which is actually more about Earth.

Join the NASA Kids' Club

Plan An Earth Day Celebration

• From simple art projects to theatre presentations, there is much you can do to raise awareness.
• For something more practical, plant a tree or a shrub together as a class. Choose one that is native to your region and that needs little water.
• Join an Earth Day event all ready planned in your area. (Type your location in the search box)

Make it a day of happiness in nature.

©2010 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

Equinox

 

I am reposting last year's post about the March equinox, as so many readers have asked for the sunrise chart again. 

With the March equinox, the seasons officially change to autumn in the south and spring in the north. "Officially" is the operative word here, for timing of the changes of the seasons is much less precise than we often think. There are not precisely 365 days to a year, so the equinoxes do not fall on the same day every year, or at the same time. 

Myths about the equinoxes abound. 

• It is said that the equinox is a day when the amount of time of light and dark is precisely equal. It usually occurs a day or two before or after. (Hence the name, which translates as "equal night")
• It is also said that the equinox brings a time of storms, but actually, record keepers checking back over 75 years have found that not only are there no extra storms, it is often a calmer period around the equinox. 
• Some people seem to think that on the vernal equinox, it is possible to balance an egg on its point. The success or failure of this peculiar activity has nothing to do with what day of the year it is. 

In spite of misunderstandings and silliness, the basic idea of equilibrium is true.  

• The equinoxes are the only days of the year when the tilt of the earth's axis and its orbit bring it to a point where it is straight in relation to the sun. (An excellent graphic for this can be found here:  http://www.kidsgeo.com/geography-for-kids/0020-solstices-and-equinoxes.php)  

• Thus the equinoxes are also the only days of the year when the sunrise is due east and the sunset due west.  
• For those who live on the equator,  the equinoxes are the only days when the sun passes directly overhead.  (See http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/090319-vernal-equinox-2009-spring.html)

It is this sense of momentous equilibrium that has effected cultures so that most mark the equinoxes as important days,  from the new year in the Persian (vernal equinox), to being the mid-way point of the season for the Chinese, to being the day from which other holy days (Passover and Easter in the northern spring, and the autumn Harvest Festival in Britain ) are calculated.

The days are important, but how to share an understanding with little ones without it getting too complicated? 

Very young children are not really interested in how the earth goes round the sun or at what angle it tilts. They have only been through four or fine years and so the concept of an entire year may not be entirely firm in their minds.  Day and night, however, are completely familiar to them, as are sunrises and sunsets. 

Play a Sunrise Game

You will need enough yellow or orange paper for each child and a globe. Ask each child to cut out a large circle from their paper and colour or paint it to be the sun. Divide the children into three groups, standing. The group in the middle lives on the equator, which you indicate on the globe. They hold their suns over their heads. The group to the right lives in the northern hemisphere, so they hold their suns to their side, toward the equator, as does the group to the other side, the southern hemisphere. Have them all turn to the "east" to make a sunrise. Those in the north and south keep their suns inclined and those on the equator keep their suns direct as they raise them up high and then turn and have them set in the "west". Emphasize that this equinox is the spring equinox in the north and the autumn equinox in the south. Hang the suns up all over the room for good cheer.

Encourage Solar Observation

Download SUNRISE CHART 

Do NOT encourage the children to look directly at the sun. Do encourage them to notice, every day in the morning, where the sunrise is in relation to their world. If they live where they cannot actually see the sun in the morning, they can note where they first see its rays or where the light is brightest when they have breakfast. Download the Sunrise Chart above, number the squares for the month,  and make enough copies for each child to have one. When they arrive in the morning, before they forget, have them draw in that day's square the object, room, building, or tree, etc. where they first saw the sun's rays that day. This will help them to see that the sunrise shifts as the year goes by, and will help make the lessons about the earth's orbiting that much easier to understand.

©2010 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

There Is Order in the Universe - the December Solstice

 
 

Today is the December solstice, the day of least sunlight in the northern hemisphere, the longest and sunniest day in the southern hemisphere. Children in both the northern and the southern hemispheres are perfectly aware of this difference from an early age. They all know and will grow up keeping the memories of summer days that last so long and winter nights that seem even longer. This is one natural experience that has not changed for people over the centuries. What we and our children do during those hours of extra light or dark may have changed radically, but not the fact that days lengthen and shorten cyclically.

This is order. This is structure. In a world where many adults are as confused as their children, and where chaos seems to lurk on every corner, where childhood is as frightening as it ever was, the ordinary movement of planets remains consistent, as well as beautiful.

Bring children's attention to the chnging amount of sunlight from this solstice onward into the new year. There is a French expression that, from this time the days grow longer by the length of a rooster's step per day. In the southern hemisphere, the days may be said to grow shorter by the same length, I would imagine. There is a baby steps and light/dark game in here somewhere.

The December solstice coincides with important holidays for a number of cultures. Holidays, especially the big ones, usually have traditions about food, and this can be used to help children understand the fact that, whatever their season, those in the opposite hemishpere are experiencing the opposite season. At this time of year in the norhern hemisphere, there is a lot of holiday baking going on: cookies, cakes,pies and tartes fill ovens and fill the air with delicious aromas. In the southern hemisphere, many families have the tradition of a great picnic feast for the holiday, with salads and barbequed meats and fresh fruits.

Have an Opposite Hemisphere Party

If you live in the southern hemisphere, bake cookies and mince meat pies with the children. One batch of cookies can be decorated half in chocolate, to symbolise the solstice. As you swelter in the double hat of oven and summer,  try to imagine snow on this December day.

If you live in the northern hemisphere, make a picnic of cold chicken and sandwiches (I do not think much fresh fruit is available) and potato salad. Bundle up and go outdoors to eat it if it is not too cold, and imagine those in Australia or Argentina playing in the hot sun this December day.

Use the globe to remind children of the earth's movements around the sun creating the seasons and help them to understand that the cycle repeats eternally.

©2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

The September Equinox

This year the September equinox occurs on the 22nd of the month: today. In the northern hemisphere, for many, it marks the beginning of autumn; and in parts of the southern hemisphere, it marks the beginning of spring.  Yet, for some cultures, the equinoxes do not mark the beginning of the season at all. Instead, they mark its peak, or midway point.

In China, where there are 24 seasonal segments, the season of autumn has all ready passed through the segments of Li Qiu (beginning of autumn), to Chu Shu (limit of heat) and then to Bai Lu (when the morning dew is white). The September equinox is called Qiu Fen, and falls in the middle of the autumn segments. After it come: Han Lu (Cold Dew) and Shuang Jiang (descent of frost).  The names of these segments indicate a culture that has observed very closely the changes in nature throughout the year. 

Name the phases of autumn or spring

Encouraging the children to recall what the weather was like during their August holidays and to notice the changes since them, ask them to make up names for the phases of autumn (or spring) as they have observed them. Perhaps they could do this in small groups or teams, sharing their impressions with one another to come up with names. 

When they have finished, compare all of their work and discuss the changes they observed. Some will show changes in nature, but many will also show changes in their man-made environments. Try to lead them to see that the human changes are, quite often, because of the weather and seasonal changes.

©2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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Security From Nature's Repetitions At The Solstice

In the last post, I wrote of giving a children a sense of security via pointing out to them the permanence of the cycles of the seasons, day and night, etc. Using tomorrow's solstice as an illustration, we can move to the next of the most fundamental lessons of nature: repetition.

Repetition is observed everywhere in nature. The seasonal cycle repeats. The processes of seeds falling, germinating, sprouting leaves, growing into plants repeat. The moon's cyclical waxing and waning , going from nothingness to fullness and back again, repeats. There are more than a million species identified and all of them have repetition in their behaviour as animals and development as plants. It is repetition that gives us an almost inborn certainty that nothing ends forever but will begin again. For small children, this is a source of comfort and security. 

Learning to observe it in nature is also the beginning of developing an enquiring mind. Encourage children to keep track of the phases of the moon all year long. Above the seasons table, keep a cutout moon that is at the same phase as is the real moon. Go outdoors and look for repetition - in a plant's repeat flowering, in the way all of the flowers on a plant are the same, in the way ants all repeat the to-and-fro of food gathering along the same path. There are innumerable examples. Help the children to find something that is repeating and to draw it or write about it.

Solstices repeat twice a year. They mark the days when the sun is as far from the zenith as it can go before it begins to move slowly back again. Put differently, it is the day when summer and winter have reached their midway point in their respective hemispheres. 

Where it is the winter solstice, people for centuries in both the northern and southern hemispheres have celebrated the day as a turning point, a time when the shortening of days ceases and long hours of darkness begin to lessen. Various symbols and rituals celebrate that the time of cold, trees without leaves, no flowers, animals either hibernating or gone -- in short, the time of dying -- has stopped, and spring, with all of its life, will return. In many pre-Christian societies, from New Zealand to Norway, the winter solstice was the beginning of the new year.

Where it is the summer solstice, it is the peak of life, fruition and flowering. Again,  there are celebrations, midnight fires, a heady exultation in the plenitude of nature. The same sense of it being a turning point is present, though in the summer it is usually with poignancy and the awareness that the days will begin to grow shorter and colder. Then, leaves will fall, birds will migrate, animals will hibernate, until it will seem that the whole world has died. Then, with spring, it will come to life again.

The repetitions of the solstices and equinoxes will go on forever. Knowing this, looking for it and for other repetitions, will help to give children the security from nature that they need in order to face the future and deal with the environmental problems that are ahead.

©2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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A version of this post, combined with the previous and the following, appears as a featured post on C&NN Connect, the ning of the Children and Nature Network