Exploring the world!

This afternoon we did some geography and began to explore and talk about the whole world! We looked at the globe and learnt that our planet is called Earth, our country is the United Kingdom and the rest of the world is made up of countries, which are all very different, and lots of sea. We found the UK on the globe and talked about how small it is compared to many other countries.

We rolled the globe around in a circle and all pointed to a country that interested us. Then Miss Ayres told us some things about that country. We looked at countries that have sea next to them and countries that only have land around them.

Then we worked in pairs and looked at a picture of somewhere in the world. We talked to our partner about what the place looked like, what we thought it might be called, if we thought it was hot or cold, what animals might live there etc. Then we shared our ideas with the rest of the class and found out where in the world our photo was from, looking to find it on the globe.

Brianna recognised the desert straight away and said "there's sand, it's hot" and said there might be camels there. Emily and Fallon had a picture of the rainforest, and we talked about how some rainforests are being cut down and the animals are losing their homes. Olivia pointed out that the trees could grow back up again, but Miss Ayres explained that they take a long time to grow. Finlay and Harrison knew their picture was a cold place ("freezing" said Harrison) and Finlay said there was water under the ice. We found the Arctic and the Antarctic on the globe and talked about the different animals that live there, such as polar bears and penguins. Jack and Blue had a picture of mountains which they recognised were cold. We learnt that the mountain in the picture was Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world! Olivia and Harry had a picture of the sea and said fish might live there. Emily added some more ideas, saying "whales, sharks and dolphins." Tommy and Charlie had a picture of the beach. We looked again at the globe and how some countries have a coastline and some don't. Summer had a picture of the English countryside and we talked about some things we recognised as being from our country, such as the green fields.

Afterwards some of us made pictures of the different places in the world we'd looked at and we looked at our new atlases and all the maps of the world. We also looked at Google Earth on the iPad and zoomed in to see Great Gaddesden and our school! Emily and Charlie were also busy putting puzzles together, first a tricky one of the whole world with lots of pieces and then one of Europe.