Seasons South and North

Free Download - Observing Nature in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres

 

This blog, Seasons South and North, celebrates its second birthday this month. By way of thanks to my readers, I have gathered together into one document all of the past year's monthly nature comparisons between two places in the southern and northern hemispheres. Please feel free to download it:

Download Observing Nature in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres

 

Enjoy the outdoors!

 

©2011 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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

 

May is such a busy and eventful month that I am very late with this post about observing nature, month-by-month, in two locations. Britain in the northern hemisphere and the Atlantic Rainforest of Brazil in the southern hemisphere.

True to form, in Europe and Britain, this May has been a "changeable May", with weather as cold as deep winter and as hot as the peak of summer. Yet, even at its coldest, when children were despairing that spring would ever come, young birds were coming to the feeders and flowers were blooming, showing them that the changes in seasons are not about the day-to-day changes in weather, but about the changes in the amount of daylight and overall warmth.

What you may see in Britain in the month of May is a flood of life too great to list here, but some of it may be that:

• Moles are active
• Red deer and roe deer are born
• Sheep will be shorn
• Many birds build their nests: blackcaps, bullfinches, cirl buntings, corn buntings, garden warblers, the hobby falcon, jackdaws, house martins, sandpipers, swifts: This is the month to look out for nests!
• Nightjars arrive
• Plenty of insects arrive for the tasty pleasure of all those building birds: apple suckers, bee flies, moths, butterflies, dragonflies, the delightful hummingbird hawk moth
• Among the many flowers, you will see: barberry, black  bryony, black medick, bugle, cleavers, holly, honeysuckle, lilac, scarlet pimpernel, sweet chestnut, yellow iris

What you may see in the southern Atlantic Rainforest of Brazil, where it is autumn and getting cold and wet and foggy, includes:

• Green parakeets in flocks (above)
• Kapok seeds tumbling to the ground and bursting open (the silk within contains the seeds that the green parakeets love) 
• Giant brown moths in swarms
• Falling leaves everywhere
• Many varieties of the helicon butterfly (below)

 

Remember to use the free Nature Observation Chart to keep track of all that you see.

©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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Changeable May

While all of the publicity about global warming and changing weather patterns are not to be disdained, the changeableness of weather is a part of its essence. Since humans began cultivation, knowing when the rains would come has been vital for every farmer. Trying to predict the weather in order to know when to safely plant so that there might be a good crop has lead to a weather lore in every region of the world.

 Rhymes, riddles, sayings, proverbs, songs and poems about nature's signs indicating weather to come are together known as weather lore or weather folklore.  The changes and unpredictability of May figure for a large portion of weather lore, and this May has certainly warranted every one of them.

May is late spring in France and Europe, and a key time of year for farmers. This year, there have been days of near freezing, days of heat into the 30s, and thunderstorms. The proverbs about the weather in May reflect this uncertain weather. 

These two give signs of good weather:

"A sunny day in late May brings baskets of fruits in the summer."

"Swarms of bees in May bring in carts of hay."

And this gives a sign of bad weather:

"If the robin sings in the hawthorn tree, sunny days are ended."

While in England, bad weather can be good news:

"A good harvest follows a cold May Day."

Children are frightened by uncertainty and take comfort from traditions. Learning time-honoured proverbs can go hand in hand with learning to observe nature's cyclical changes to help children both understand and feel more secure in the world.

Make a Changeable Weather Sign

You will need:

• Paper plates or large circles of card 
•         Tape or glue 
• String or ribbon for hanging  OR
•         Stiff strips of card, tongue depressors, or tubes from rolls of kitchen towels for handles   

Teach the children the proverbs above, connecting them with what can be seen outdoors. (It is important to keep weather lore a part of reality.) Then, have the children draw a sunny day on one side of the circle, with a sun and fruits and bees and hay. On the other side, ask them to draw the robin, hawthorne flowers and rain clouds with rain.

Attach either the string to hand the circles or the handles to hold them. In either case, the children now can turn them or watch them spin most changeably.

Make Up Some May Weather Proverbs

Have fun trying to recall what happened in the weather and nature in May and relate those events to one another. Encouraging rhyming can add a language skills aspect to the lesson.

N.B. Keep to reality and do not let the discussion slip into superstition! (e.g. sunny weather when plants are young shoots DOES help them grow and produce a good yield. However, the weather and nature CANNOT indicate such things as getting new toys, falling down a hole, winning the lottery, etc.)

May Weather Proverbs for History or Geography

Send the children home with an assignment to ask parents, grandparents etc. for any weather lore they know from their childhoods. Discuss what they found. Locate the region and/or country to which the proverb pertains. Make a map of your proverb locations and discuss the weather and seasons in each place.

©2009, Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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Marega - The Dry Season

Early, early in the morning, before dawn , the southern hemisphere star known as Canopus or Naka will soon be visible. Then the baobab (Adansonia digitata) trees will begin to lose their leaves.

(pitcure from www.photobucket.com)

As the signs accumulate, it is sure that, any day now, the season, Marega, will begin in southern Africa. Marega is a winter, and there will be snow on the mountains in Lesotho, but much of the high plateau area (the  provinces of Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Guateng in South Africa, and the southern regions of Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique)  it is a time of cool dryness. Days are bright and crisp and rainless. Nights are cold. 

This is the season during which all green disappears and the veld becomes brown. Some rivers will dry up; animals will gather closer than is comfortable around water. Among people, it is a time when the hoeing will begin, and farmers will prepare their fields for planting maize in July and August, when the rains may begin again.

Compare Trees in May

In Europe, it is late spring. Roses are blooming, trees are in leaf. It is a time of plenitude in extreme. In southern Africa, it is now the dry season -- Marega -- and all will become more and more parched until August, when the rains will return. To cope with the long dry seasons, the baobab can store thousands of litres of water in its trunk. An oak needs lots of water, as much as 200 liters per day. 

Download Trees in May

Looking at the silhouettes of trees helps to focus on their shape and fullness. Silhouettes are great fun to try to make. Older children can try to cut the shape of a local tree - in leaf or not - from black paper. Younger children can draw with black crayon or charcoal on paper.

©2009, Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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May Day - A Spring Festival

In much of  Europe, the first of May has been celebrated as a spring festival since Roman times. More recently, in many countries it is a national holiday - labour day - in many countries, but its ancient significance has always been and for most people remains the celebration of a season. IN the northern hemisphere, where winters are in some parts long and hard, the joy felt at the coming of warmer weather is intense and the celebrations once were riotous.

The old country traditions of crowning a May Queen and sometimes King have mostly disappeared, as has the Maypole, with its ribbons and dance. Perhaps we need not regret some of the more peculiar tradition of rolling naked in the grass before dawn on the First of May as a beauty treatment, or that of the mock battles between Summer and Winter in which some of the players really were killed. 

The last custom still in practice seems to be "bringing in the May", e.g. gathering spring flowers or, in the cities, buying them. In England, the flowers are usually the white hawthorn blossoms, so associated with the festival that another name for hawthorn is "May". In France, the traditional May Day flower is the lily-of-the-valley, and the streets are full of vendors on May Day morning.

                     

For a discussion of the history of May Day from the Library of Congress, see this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3Ls4drd0z8

May Day Traditions for the Classroom

Why not bring back and update some of the traditions? 

Bringing in the May - Instead of buying or picking flowers, why not plant some?  In a pot at the window, in the school garden, in an empty patch of land, plant some flower seeds with the children. 

If this is impossible, now is the time in the north to visit woods and parks where spring flowers are blooming.  Explain to the children that the tradition was an expression of joy , and that the flowers of spring were a sign of warmer weather after the cold. They are planting flowers so that there will always be spring blooms.

May Queens and Kings - It is not necessary to create resentment by electing a single Queen and King. Why not have all the children be Queens and Kings of May? Make crowns and decorate the with drawings and paintings of flowers.

Set up and Decorate a Maypole - the traditional Maypole was huge, with many long ribbons attached to a ring at the top. People performed a dance holding the ribbons and going around the Maypole, weaving the coloured ribbons into a lovely plait. The last time I saw a Maypole dance was in 1963. While I am sure that some communities still perform it, it is not really what I am suggesting for the classroom. Set up a pole of 2.5 or 3 meters in height, perhaps attached to the wall or in a base for holding a Christmas tree. At the top, loosely attach a ring of gardening wire. Cut many lengths of coloured ribbon to the same size. Ask each child to write their names or initials on one length of ribbon. Help each child to tie his or her length of ribbon to the ring at the top of the pole.

Organize a May Day Parade - Traditionally, a village May Queen and King would go from door to door singing and bringing flowers and branches of greenery to each home. Organize for your class to make paper flowers and, wearing their crowns go to visit other classes in the school, sing a song or say a poem, and deliver some flowers.

©2009 Anne Morddel

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