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

What to Look for in March in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres

 
 

One of the equinoxes occurs this month, moving the seasons to autumn in the Atlantic Rainforest region of southern Brazil and to a longed-for spring in Britain.

As nature adjusts to a time of greater light and warmth, here is what you can expect to see in Britain during the month of March:

• Hyacinth are in bloom, (as in the picture above)
• Badgers, rabbits, field voles and lambs are born
• The Magpie and robin build their nests
• The Blackbird sits on eggs
• The Dog Violet is in flower
• Slugs pair !

In the Atlantic Rainforest region of southern Brazil, March is a time of great, late-autumn heat, when everyone feels almost unable to move because it is so hot and humid. Here is what to look for in that rainforest in March:

 

• Cicadas are screaming loudly everywhere and all day long
• The ingã tree is flowering
• The "little bird of seven colours" (pasarinho de sete cores in Portuguese) also called the green-headed tanager, is so hungry it can be tamed with fresh bananas (see the drawing below)
• The magnificent blue morpho butterfly can be seen (see the drawing above)
• The Lenten Tree (Quaresmeira in Portuguese) which is native to the Atlantic Rainforest, begins to flower
• The tiny red tasselflower flowers (below)

 
 
 
 

Observe

Again, use the Nature Observation Chart to note your own observations for the month.

(The drawings above come from the March page of The Big Field : a Child's Year Under the Southern Cross.)

©2010 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

Seasons and Months Around the World - Keeping Track

 

I find that, as I write more blogs about the different seasons around the world, keeping track of what is going on where becomes more difficult. So, I thought I'd put together a little chart to help.  It gives a sampling of locations in the northern hemisphere, along the equator, and in the southern hemisphere, with what seasons they experience for any given month.

I would have liked to put in some drawings, put it is all ready so dense, that I thought they would make it too hard to read. I wanted to keep it A4 size so that readers can download and print it:

Download Chart of Seasons and Months Around the World

I might do a much larger one some day, a poster perhaps, so that I can put in some illustration.  

I also think it might be a nice idea to do more charts of other aspects of seasons around the world. I do hope this will be helpful.

©2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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Sliding Through Seasons

In this month of autumn rains, spring rains, long rains, there is also snow in some places and green grass sprouting in others. Many readers have kindly sent in their observations of children at play this March, or their memories of their own play. Rather remarkably, nearly all focus on one favourite activity: sliding.

Ceyda writes: "When I was twelve, we lived in Karachi and behind our house were marshes and all sorts of mud during the spring rains....we had great fun running and sliding in that stuff...came out caked in mud."

Halisi writes from Kenya that children there, where the Long Rains are beginning, are "playing in the rain and mud."

Aurore in Switzerland says that there is still plenty of snow on the ground but in March it begins to melt and be more slippery. "Children sit on their jackets and slide down the hills of wet snow."

Catherine writes from California that "March is one of the few months when the grass is green" and recalls how much fun it was to slide down a hill in a large carton.

Sliding  is so much fun that children all over the world enjoy it. It is familiar to them across cultures, hemispheres and seasons. Here, we can make the joy of sliding into a way to reinforce the learning  of the different seasons in different hemispheres.

Play "Slides and Ladders Through Seasons"

Referring to the previous posts, "March Is Autumn, March Is Spring" and "The Season of the Long Rains", remind the children of the different seasons in different parts of the world. In parts of Africa, the four seasons are the long and short rains and the long and short dry seasons. In much of the temperate zones, the four seasons are winter, spring, summer, and autumn in the northern hemisphere, with  the order being summer, autumn, winter, spring in the southern hemisphere.

Download Slides and Ladders Through Seasons 

Print off enough copies for children to play the game. Alternatively, you could project it onto the wall or screen for the group to play together. To enhance the learning value, each time a player's marker lands on a season, he or she must call out a country, region, or continent where that season occurs.

(Basic playing rules: This is a simple game of luck. You will need a single die. Each child will need a marker or counter, such as a button or a large seed. They need to be of different colours so that the pieces do not become confused. Taking turns, each players rolls the die and moves along the numbered squares. If he or she lands on a square with a ladder, the marker moves to the top of the ladder. If the marker lands on a slide, the marker moves to the bottom of the slide. The first to reach the final square is the winner.)

Further Discussion

Encourage the children to share their adventures of sliding. Ask:

In which season would snow (grass sliding, mud sliding) sliding be possible? 

Where would that season occur?

Which kind of sliding would be the wettest?

Which the coldest?

Go out to the playground slides!

© 2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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The Season of the Long Rains

Until now, I have written about seasons in the southern and northern hemispheres that are clearly opposed, and have said nothing about that vast part of our planet that is equatorial. It is a region where the seasons are not marked by changes from hot to cold but from wet to dry.

Mary Muhenda writes from Uganda about the season of the Long Rains, which is just beginning: 

"Uganda has four seasons: the Long Rains, the Long Dry Season, the Short Rains, and the Short Dry Season." The Long Rains begin in February or March and last until May. The name is not because the season is long (it is actually shorter than the Short Rains) but because each afternoon when it rains, it rains for a long, long time.

There are few sights as beautiful as the coming of the Long Rains -- Masika in Swahili -- in Africa. One stands in the dry, sunny heat and can gaze far away across the flat grasslands, where vast, dark clouds are gathered, heavy and low. The lightning flashes and the rain pours down in wide bands, all at a distance. Close by, the sky is blue, the land is parched, its breathlessness turning from despair to anticipation as, over the next few days, the dark cloud that never seems to empty draws closer. The air becomes moist. One or two plump, lone drops fall from the sky. Every plant and creature strains toward the moisture like Tantalus. Finally, the huge cloud is above and the rain shoots down out of it to an earth so dry that the dust bounces under the beating drops for the first days of the rains. There is a surge of joy in all of nature striving upward to meet the falling surge of warm rain. Flowers bloom, trees seem to fatten, birds sing again, people dance.

All becomes mud. After the initial joyous gratitude, people set to work planting their crops of "sorghum, maize, peas and beans," Mary writes. Now "the countryside is very green and lovely". All plants grow quickly, not just the crops, and weeding is a daily requirement. While farmers and families are tramping through the mud to plant and weed, animals are celebrating.

Away from the cities, the animals have their own way with the mud that is now everywhere in a variety of colours, but especially brick red. Elephants (Loxondonta) take mud baths. Black rhinos (Diceros bicornis) indulge themselves by wallowing in the mud for hours at sunset.

                 

Not in the beginning of the season, when the dust is still dancing under the thundering raindrops, but when the earth is truly wetted, the African bullfrogs (Pyxicephalus adspersus) emerge from the holes in which they have waited out the dry season and begin their loud and sombre chorus.

The Long Rains will last for months. Every afternoon and into the evening, it will rain heavily for hours. People will stop celebrating the rains and grow tired of them so that, when everything begins to dry out in May, they will celebrate the coming of the new season: the Short Dry Season.

How To Celebrate the Long Rains

Get Muddy! Wallow in the Mud Like a Black Rhino!!

Tell the parents the day before that the children need to come in old clothes. At the end of the day, fill some plastic tubs with mud and let the children plunge their arms in it up to their elbows, smearing streaks on their faces, making mud pies, enjoying the naughty squelching sounds and the obscene thrill of sensuality. No?

The current issue of Exchange has an article by Joan Almon entitled "The Fear of Play" which discusses just why no one would follow the above instructions, though there is absolutely nothing wrong with them. You can purchase the article here:

https://secure.ccie.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=5018642 

Michael Rosen, the Children's Laureate  has spoken out often, if not in praise of mud, at least very eloquently making the case for children's play. In preparing this post, I was stunned to find that one magazine considered it necessary to give a recipe for making mud. How can that be? How can anyone be so cut off from the natural world as to need a recipe for making mud? Here it is, with no secret ingredients:

http://www.craftzine-digital.com/craft/vol03/?pg=143

Get a Little Muddy, Like a Little Black Rhino!

Make copies of the rhino mask template below on card and give one to each child to cut out. Give each child a small cup of mud to smear on the mask. When it is dry, put string or an elastic band through the holes in the tabs and the child can wear a muddy rhino mask.

Download Rhino mask 4 

Pretend to Get Muddy!

Create the masks as above and give each child a grey crayon to colour it.

Have an African Bullfrog Chorus!

Scroll or play through the frogs in the game on this page to get to the African Bullfrog and play his call for the class:

http://research.calacademy.org/research/library/biodiv/kids_page/frogs/frogs2.html

Divide the children into two groups and have them try to outdo one another imitating the bullfrog's calls. Have them sing their bullfrog call in a round.

Additionally, play "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog" by the Creedence Clearwater Revival 

here, on YouTube:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtYnCmw2CWE

Teach the children the chorus:

Joy to the world, all the boys and girls

All the fishes in the deep blue seas

Joy to you and me

Now, add in the chorus of  the bullfrog call. Still singing, go out and weed the garden you planted recently and think of people in East Africa doing the same in the rain.

Discuss rains

In the post "March Is Autumn; March Is Spring", the rains of Brazil and Britain in March were discussed. Now, the Long Rains of East Africa are an addition to March's rainy reputation.

Measure and Compare Rainfall

For children aged 8 and up, here is a great lesson and activity for measuring rainfall from NASA:

http://scool.larc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/view_lessonplan.cgi?id=12

Enjoy the rain!

©2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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March Is Autumn, March Is Spring

March is a dramatic month in terms of weather. In parts of Europe and North America, it usually arrives with wind and rain and the first displays of crocuses and daffodils. It is the very beginning of spring. One of the most well-known of all weather proverbs is :

"If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb; if March comes in like a lamb, it will go out like a lion."

The meaning being that if the month begins with stormy weather, it will end with sunshine; if it begins with warm, calm weather, it will end with storms. Whatever the order, March is certain to be blustery and wet at some point. William Wordsworth (1770-1850) described March in Britain in his classic poem:

Written in March

The Cock is crowing,

The stream is flowing,

The small birds twitter,

The lake doth glitter

The green field sleeps in the sun;

The oldest and youngest

Are at work with the strongest;

The cattle are grazing,

Their heads never raising;

They are forty feeding like one!

Like an army defeated

The snow hath retreated,

And now doth fare ill

On the top of the bare hill;

The plowboy is whooping - anon - anon

There's joy in the mountains;

There's life in the fountains;

Small clouds are sailing,

Blue sky prevailing;

The rain is over and gone!

In the southern hemisphere, March is autumn, the end of summer, yet in many places also wet. In the rainforest regions of South America, summer is a time of incessant warm rain, culminating in March. In autumn, the last of the big rainstorms pelt down to an already sodden land, then some time during the month, finally stop. So, in many parts of the world, whether it is autumn or spring, March can be relied upon to be wet. Surely the greatest poem about wet March in South America is the lyrics to the song by 

Antonio Carlos Jobim (1927-1994):

Aguas de Março

(Waters of March)

It's a stick, it's a stone,

It's the end of the road,

It's the nub of the stump,

It's a little alone.

It's a sliver of glass,

It's life, it's the sun,

It's night, it's death,

It's a lasso, it's a fish hook.

It's the peroba-do-campo*

It's the knot in the wood,

Cainga, Candeia**

It's the Matita Pereira***

It's the wind in the woods,

The tumble down the bank,

It's the profound mystery

It's the "want" or "don't want".

It's the wind blowing,

It's the bottom of the hill,

It's the beam, it's the void,

It's the barn-raising party.****

It's the raining rain,

It's the river bank talking

Of the Waters of March,

It's the end of field work.

It's the foot, it's the ground,

It's the beat of marching down the road,

It's the bird in the hand,

It's a slingshot's stone.

It's a bird in the sky

And a bird on the ground,

It's the brook, it's the spring, 

It's the piece of bread.

It's the bottom of the well,

It's the end of the road,

It's the look of disgust,

It's a little alone.

It's a thorn, it's a nail,

It's a telling, it's a tale, 

It's a point, it's a dot, 

It's a sprinkled drop.

It's the fish, it's the gesture,

It's a shining silver,

It's the morning light,

It's the roof tiles arriving.

It's the firewood, it's the day

It's the end of bitterness,

It's the glass of rum, 

It's the sliver on the road.

It's the project for the house,

It's the person in bed,

It's the car that's stuck,

It's the mud, it's the mud.

It's a river crossing, it's a bridge,

It's a toad, it's a frog,

It's a remnant of the forest

In the morning light.

It's the Waters of March

Closing the summer,

It's the promise of life

Within your heart.

It's a snake, it's a stick,

It's John, it's Joe,

It's a thorn in the hand,

It's a cut in the foot.

It's a river crossing, it's a bridge,

And a toad, and a frog,

It's a beautiful horizon,

It's a miserable cold.

It's the Waters of March

Closing the summer,

And the promise of life 

Within your heart.

(my free translation)

*    The peroba-do-campo (Aspidosperma tormentosum) is a semi-deciduous tree that grows throughout Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay.

**     Cainga  (Moldenhawera floribunda) is a tree of the Atlantic Rainforest with beautiful bright yellow flowers.

    Candeia (Piptocarpha rotundifolia) is a small, deciduous tree that grows throughout Brazil.

***    The Matita Pereira is the Striped Cuckoo (Tapera naevia) which can be found across 85% of South America. The Brazilian folkloric character, Saci-Pererê, can turn himself into this bird at will.

**** The festa da cumeira is a party to help a person who has built the framework for his house or barn and is ready to thatch or tile the roof. It is similar to the richtfest in Germany or the barn-raising in North America.

Things To Do With Poems About March

Hear the Wordsworth poem read aloud:

http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com

Hear the most well-known interpreter of the Waters of March, Elis Regina,  sing the song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRqI5R6L7ow

Write a March Poem

For the very young, while it is important to hear and perhaps even memorize Wordsworth's poem, it is a bit too much to expect them to to produce a formal poem, but how joyously they would be able to create an impressionistic poem or song such as Jobim's lyrics. As a group activity, have the children call out their strongest impressions of what they have observed outdoors this month while you write them on a long band of brown paper. Have them colour in the borders and then hang the masterpiece on the wall. Alternatively, each child can write two or three observations on a piece of paper, adding drawings. Then, tape them all together in a long band to hang on the wall. Have everyone try to sing them along with the easy chant of the song.

If you play guitar, here is the fingering for playing the song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUX9S9OuG0Q

N.B. "Aguas de Março" has been recorded by over 80 artists and used in many advertisements. It is quite possible that some of the children may know the tune.

©2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

Unless otherwise noted, photos from www.photobucket.com

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