Once again a simple DIY activity to understand the concept practically.
We used three thermacol balls, some barbecue skewers and chenille stems for this.
So we had Sun , the biggest ball out of three, Earth – the medium size one and Moon – smallest one.
What is axis of earth
Activity 1:
An Axis is an imaginary line around which earth rotates.
Take the Earth ball, let the child pass a skewer from the center, entering from one end and coming out from other.
Let the child hold it using the axis and rotate the axis, The ball will rotate. So we learn this is how planets rotate , and that’s how our earth rotates.
Remove the stick and rotate the ball, show that in reality there is no stick or bar passing from one end of earth to other . it just rotates on its own.
Activity 2 :
Label the North pole and south pole. The top side of axis is North Pole and bottom side is south pole.
Activity 3:
Tilt the skewer a little to show how earth is inclined on its axis. We used a play dough box as base for skewer just so as the assembly stays on its own in inclined position.
What is Equator
Take the earth ball and a chenille stem, ask child to tie chenille stem around the horizontally center part of earth sphere.
This is the equator. [In reality there is not such physical line, its all assumed]
Since Equator divides the earth into two equal parts and we leveraged this activity to understand that as well.
Let child mark the two hemisphere, the part above the chenille stem is Northern hemisphere and the part below it is Southern Hemisphere.
You may color the thermacoal ball to make it look like earth, sun or moon. We had to quickly finish the activity and move to next topic so we skipped the decoration part ,and continued with plain white ones.
Next topic is rotation & revolution , Motion of earth around the Sun. We will also be adding Moon to this whole setup.
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