Lets look at the following image:
Parent/Guardians can show learners a picture of Earth and ask them the following questions.
What is the round object in the photograph? - Earth
What do we call the blue parts that you can see? - It is the ocean/sea.
What do we call the green parts?- It’s called land.
What do you think the swirling white ribbons are?- Clouds, which shows us weather patterns.
The white swirls are clouds. The brown, yellow and green parts are land. And the white parts are ice and snow. The equator is a make-believe line around the center of Earth.
The Earth is often called the “Blue Planet”, from the photograph above, do you think it is a suitable name? Why or why not?
Planet Earth has been called the "Blue Planet" due to the abundant water on its surface. Here on Earth, we take liquid water for granted; after all, our bodies are mostly made of water. However, liquid water is a rare commodity in our solar system. Only on such planets could life as we know it flourish.
Did you know that the first ever picture taken of Earth was taken from Apollo ii in 1972. Apollo was the first space craft sent into space by the United States of America. Apollo circled the moon and took a series of images of similar images of the complete Earth. People saw for the first time that we live on a single living planet, in an ocean of space.
Earth is made up of rock. The Earth is a round planet made of rock. It is one of eight planets, all moving around the Sun. Together, the Sun and planets make up the solar system.
Let’s break up that term. Let’s looks at the work solar.
What does the word solar mean?
Solar means Sun, in an ancient language.
How do you think the Earth moves?
Earth spins around on it’s own axis and moves around the Sun in space, and keeps in place by invisible forces.
Lets look at the following picture:
What does the following picture show us?
It shows us the layer that makes up the Earth.
Let’s thinks of this for a moment that if we could cut a slice out of Earth like you would do with a cake.
What would we see?
We know that Earth is not hallow or squishy, but it is also not solid hard like a cricket ball.
As we can see in the cross-section of the Earth on the picture, Earth is made up of three layers covered by a layer (skin) on the outside which is known as a crust.
The layers start with the inner core, surrounded by the outer core and then the mantle, just underneath the crust.
Scientists believe that Earth was formed 4,6 Billion years ago and was at first a molten ball of rock and metal. So, the first layer of Earth is called the inner core which is made up of metals such as iron and nickel and is compressed into a solid metal ball in the center of Earth. This center is extremely hot.
The outer layer is a thick layer of melted rock which we call magma. The melted rock is mostly made of different mixture of metals which is soft enough to move slowly around.
The next layer is called the mantle. The mantle is the third layer which consists of solid and super-heated rock. The rock at the upper part of the mantle is solid because the temperature is cooler over there.
The last layer is called the crust is the thinnest layer, and it keeps the continents in position and forms mountains and causes earthquakes. The crust can be thin on some areas and thicker on other areas. The earth crust consist of layers of hard and soft rock, pockets filled with air or water and many valuable minerals buried in the rocky layers.
Questions:
1) How many layers is the Planet Earth made from?
2) Name the four different layers?
Parent/Guardian can print out the following worksheet for learners to complete on their own.
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