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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June's Many Winters in Australia Mean Love Trains

June is wintertime in Australia, with days shorter and cooler than they are in January. Australia is so immense that its winters are varied  -- in some parts of the country, winter is dry; in other parts it is rainy -- and have different names in different regions. Some of Australia's names for this season are:

• Mawkur
• Alhwerrpa 
• Nguag 
• Gagulong 
• Rramardu 
• Tunna 
• Tugarah Tuli 
• Yurrluurrp 
• Yutang 
• Dharratharramirri 

  
  

These words are so mellifluous! I especially like Dharratharramirri, which means "the season of the cool winds";  the very word sounds like soft breezes, onomatopoetic zephyrs soft on the tongue.

In spite of the variation across the continent,  one thing that is the same everywhere at this time of the year is the behaviour of the echidna, also called the spiny anteater ( Tachyglossidae ). This fascinating animal is to be found all over Australia, wherever there are plenty of ants. They spend their lives alone, eating ants and keeping out of view, except in winter. Now is their mating season, when they tend to gather together, males following a female in a line that people call a "love train".

An excellent page of information for young people about this animal can be found on Scribbly Gum.

As ever, Wikipedia has an article on it as well.

Watch the echidna on this YouTube video

Model an Echidna

You will need:

modeling clay

toothpicks

a print of the picture above to serve as a guide

Ask the children to mold the clay into the body, sculpting a head and snout. Then ask them to put the toothpicks into the body as spines, being careful to have them all slant in the same direction, as in the picture.

 ©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

Seasons On the Oceans - Tropical Cyclones

In honour of today being World Oceans Day, the post is about seasons on the oceans.

June is one of the months of peak storm activity over many of the world's oceans. Tropical storms have all ready occurred this year in both the northeast and the northwest Pacific Ocean and in the north Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. The season is just beginning in the north Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Worldwide, the number of tropical cyclones this year should peak in August or September. Many, many of the readers of this blog, and the children they are educating, live where tropical storms regularly come to shore.  For most others, the big storms are enough a part of the news that even little children hear about them.

When a tropical storm becomes large and the winds reach a speed of about 120 km per hour, it is called a tropical cyclone, a hurricane or a typhoon. A number of factors are necessary for a tropical cyclone to form but one of the key ones is that the surface temperature of the water - for 50 meters down -- must be at least 26.5 degrees centigrade. That's warm. One of the main effects of tropical cyclones is to create great waves, which stir up the water, bringing up cooler waters and reducing the temperature. When they hit land, they bring enormous amounts of rain to land that is often parched. As with everything in nature, they are a part of a cycle. Yet, as everyone knows, these storms are violent and dangerous for most creatures on land. The high winds, great waves and flooding destroy buildings, leaving many people homeless.

It is important that children learn about these great storms without fear, but with curiosity when examining them as phenomena and with practicality when learning how to prepare for and survive them. If you are living in an area of such storms, the best websites for practical knowledge for children are given below. If you live far from where such storms occur, perhaps now is the time not only to teach children about them, but to encourage children to be involved in helping others who have suffered from them. Save the Children has excellent and trustworthy programmes of disaster relief to which a class might donate.

Tropical Cyclone Dance

This works best with a large group of children.

You will need enough pieces of A4 size paper for each child to have one, in three colours: black, white, grey.

Have three or four children, holding white paper, stand in a tight circle and shake their papers quietly. They are the eye of the hurricane.

Have a larger group of children, holding black paper, stand in one or two large circles around the eye, and shake their papers as noisily as possible. They are the thunderstorms that surround the eye.

Have the last group of children, holding grey paper, stand in a circle around the thunderstorm group, shaking their papers with a medium amount of noise. They are the rain bands.

Now, have the children in the thunderstorms and rain bands move, waving and shaking their papers, around the eye, which does not turn.

This has been done by a class in India with coloured scarves, making a very lovely presentation.

Recommended Children's Books About Tropical Cyclones

David Wiesner's Hurricane

Jonathan London's  Hurricane!

Alexandra Wallner's  Sergio and the Hurricane

Dierdre McLaughlin Mercier's  Yesterday We Had a Hurricane

For older children:   Ocean Storm Alert!

Fo older children or for reading  aloud to children :

Theodore Taylor's beautiful story: The Cay

Marguerite Henry's true story about wild horses caught in a hurricane :   Stormy, Misty's Foal

Websites for children about hurricanes and tropical cyclones

The US government site, with games and how to prepare:  Hurricanes

The Weather wiz kids pages on Hurricanes

©2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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The Kuryt in Wintertime

In June, in the southern states of Brazil - Paraná, Santa Caterina, Rio Grande do Sul - it is the beginning of winter. The coastal Atlantic Rainforest is beginning to be foggy almost every day, and temperatures can drop to freezing at night. One of the most common signs of winter's advance is the arrival in markets of seeds of the Paraná pine.

This beautiful, tall, straight tree towers high in the Atlantic Rainforest. As it grows toward the upper canopy, the lower branches drop off until the adult tree ends with an umbrella shape. The Paraná pine (Araucaria angustifolia)  is not a pine at all but a much more delicate  relative of the monkey puzzle tree.  The monkey puzzle tree, a native of Chile, can survive in Europe, but not the Paraná pine. It cannot cope with the dry summers, nor with the below freezing temperatures of winters.

The Tupi-Guarani name for the tree is Kuryt, the "nut tree". The species has been around for 250 million years, but may not last much longer, for two reasons. It has been logged mercilessly for its wood.  It was once so plentiful that it was identified with the region and the Paraná pine is the symbol of the state of Paraná. It is having trouble regenerating because people, monkeys, and birds love its seeds. It is life threatening to be directly under one of these trees when the seed balls drop. Each ball can weigh up to ten kilos and hold as many as 150 seeds.

Have a Paraná Pine Party

If you are living in southern South America, then normally, it is a great pleasure to boil the seeds with salt and eat them. Why not change this annual event into something that will help the tree survive? Why not plant the seeds instead of eating them this year? Select a good place where some tall trees can grow. At the market, but the greenest ball of seeds you can find, and plant them.  It is also possible to obtain small trees of Paraná Pines from city and state nurseries to plant. 

What Are Your State or County Trees?

This activity can be done anywhere in the world. Most counties and states around the world have a tree a one of their symbols. Work with the children to find out what yours is. Explore to learn more about it. Find where you can take the children to see one. Make a scrap book of drawings and information about your tree symbol.

©2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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The South-North Seasons Table in June

Now is the time to update the display on the South-North Seasons Table (see the post of 21 February) so that it will reflect the winter of the southern hemisphere and the high summer of the northern hemisphere.  

For the southern side, it is now getting to be winter, a time of windy cold in the southern hemisphere. If you are in that part of the world, place the table near a window where you can hang bird feeders, for now is when native birds will most need help getting enough food. As they come to feed above the seasons table, they become a living but free part of the display.  If you are depicting southern Africa, have the children together create from brown clay a baobab tree (see the photo in the post about Marega), a simple task for now is when the tree is without its leaves, and place it on the table. If you are depicting South America, have the children model from brown clay nests of the oven bird. You may leave the sky blue, but add lots of blowy streaks of grey to indicate the cold winds of the season.

For the northern side, you will want to display summer's brilliance and colour, the warmth, smells, and vibrance. Prepare small pots and plant nasturtium seeds, which are inexpensive, easy to grow, and have bright flowers. The leaves and, with some varieties the flowers too, are edible. This means that, when your holidays come, you can make a small salad from this part of the seasons table. From walks outdoors, add stones, feathers, fallen nests. Make a mobile of butterflies drawn by the children and hang it low over that side of the table. Why not try to weave together bits of straw to make a bird's nest? Occasional bowls of fruit (to be eaten quickly!) can also be added. Change the sky to a brilliant blue. 

When it is time to read a story, gather the children around the table and choose stories that can be related to the displays. Be sure to keep a globe or map nearby to explain the two hemispheres and their seasons.

©2009, Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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