What is this? What could the lesson be about? Isn’t this a piece of material we’ve had since Primary? There are lines on the Earth, imaginary lines, and they mark some very real things.
Here’s how we found out.
We looked on the board. Eight of us were invited to the lesson, but a couple of others who remembered it from last year wanted to see it again.
When we saw the light bulb, we had a hint of what this would be about, Sun and Earth. We helped get the other things that would be needed.
The Sandpaper Globe, the Political Globe. . .and then, at Patricia’s suggestion, we put the Political Globe away for a little while.
With the light on, Patricia began a story about the movements of the earth, and what we already know about these movements.
She pointed out that we had looked recently at what might happen if Earth did not rotate. We could be burning up on one side of the earth, and freezing on the other!
We could see that it follows logically, that, while it’s day on one side, it’s night on the other. Using our imaginations we could also see that if you draw a line all the way around the middle, you show where it is hottest all of the time, the Equator.
Patricia asked Mariam to get a piece of string and tied it right around the middle the other way, up and down. Then she tied a bow in the string and began to talk about this other imaginary line.
It is called a Meridian, and it helps measure how far it is from one place to the other, going east and west. Depending on where it is, it could show us where it is day and where it is night on Earth.
We then began to look for meridians on the Political Globe. We counted the ones that were marked and wondered about how many there are in all.
In every lesson there’s
- something we know,
- something new,
- something to imagine and
- something to wonder about.
That’s why we like to go to lessons, even when we don’t know at first what they’re about—and they’re never long, either!
By now you’ve guessed it. This lesson is about lines on the earth, specifically, meridians.
After this lesson, what would you like to draw? What would you like to learn? Have you heard of the Prime Meridian? Come see us follow up on our lessons.
And, thank you for reading our blog!
