Form I Geography
Mountains and Hills
We talked about mountains and hills today. We talked about how the top is called a summit and the bottom, the foot (foothills). We also talked about how a valley is between two hills or mountains. They colored and labeled these areas on their maps of the U. S.
The Water Cycle
As a way of introducing how rivers are made, we discussed the water cycle. We talked about how when a pot of water boils on the stove, that the water boils away. We moisten a chalkboard with a wet sponge and watched the water disappear. We talked about how clothes dry when left outside on the clothes line. We discussed how when it rains there are puddles, but when the sun comes out, they all dry up. The same with the dew found in the morning on plants, disappears at the sun comes up. We talked about how all of these are examples of water entering the atmosphere through the process of evaporation.
Rivers: The Work of Rivers
After identifying the rivers on their maps of the United States, we talked about rivers and their work. They had noticed that when it rains tiny streams of water form which chase each other down the slopes. The streams cut away the loose soil and carry it off. They noticed how muddy this loose soil makes the water. We talked about how when streams originate in the mountains the water also carries pieces of the mountain along with it. High up in the valley you can see pebbles in the stream bed, but lower down the pebbles are worn into gravel and as it gets even farther down, the gravel grinds down into sand. The water also wears down any of the stones found along the shore of a river. You will find them to be smooth and round. Fertile meadows are formed out of the loam that has been washed down the streams from the hills and mountains. The river overflows its banks from time to time, leaving a layer of rick mud, which makes the soil very fertile. This is what the streams are doing everywhere -plowing deep furrows in the sides of mountains, grinding the pebbles and sand into fine soil and carrying it to the valleys below.
Simple Maps
The boys learned the placement and names of the continents, by making a simple map. They did not draw the continents with the continents actual shapes, but drew them as circles and labeled them.
