Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2019 i Click Science and Discovery Magazine for Preschoolers and Young Children

Hi! My name is Earth. Some people call me Gaia, the blue marble, the world, or the third planet from the sun. You can call me Planet Awesome. I was born 4.54 billion years ago. I don’t remember what it was like to be a baby. Who does? But I’ve been told I was a hot mess. Explosive. Gassy! Very cranky. Then I started to cool off, and things got wet. Really wet. It rained for thousands of years. (I’m not kidding: thousands!) I was soggy and lonely. A few islands popped up in my oceans, but no plants or animals. My islands must have been lonely too. They got together and made bigger islands called continents. I remember Ur and Nuna and the ginormous Pangea. Then Pangea split into…

If you look at a map or globe of the world, you’ll see big pieces of land separated by oceans. Those large areas of land are called continents. Continents look too huge to move around. But they do! We don’t notice any movement because it is so slow, only about an inch or two a year. That’s roughly the same speed that your fingernails grow. An inch is not very much. But over millions of years the inches add up. In fact, the continents were once all joined together into one giant supercontinent called Pangea. Pangea began to split apart about 200 million years ago, and the pieces slowly moved to the places we find today’s continents. See how the bump on one side of South America slips right into…

(Almost half my life) You probably wouldn’t even recognize me! (Though I’ve always been round.) 2,400,000,000 years ago Air! If anyone had been alive, they could finally take a breath! 470,000,000 years ago Plants that can live on land. 400,000,000 years ago And then came bugs. 240,000,000 years ago My first dinosaur! 210,000,000 years ago Yay for mammals! They’re fuzzy and warm. 150,000,000 years ago Birds. Did you know they are relatives of dinosaurs? 130,000,000 years ago Flowers. I’m a very pretty planet. It’s not bragging if it’s true. 200,000 years ago Homo sapiens! You humans have big brains and walk on two feet.…

The bands of color on this map show five major biomes: aquatic (or underwater), desert, grassland, forest, and tundra. Biomes are large areas of the world that share similar weather patterns and types of soil and water. They are often described by the kinds of plants and animals that live there. A cactus, for example, does best in the desert biome, and a fir tree in the forest biome. Scientists don’t always agree on how many biomes there are. You might say, for example, that the forest biome is made up of places with lots of trees and enough water to keep the trees healthy. But forests can also be divided into smaller biomes based on their temperatures and the kinds of trees found there. Both ways can be right.…

This globe isn’t round like Earth. But we still think it looks pretty amazing. 1. Cut out the big square, and find the blue line on the white side. Fold the square in half along the blue line so the white side shows. Unfold. 2. Fold the square in half diagonally along the red line so you see the map, and unfold. Then fold in along the green line so the map shows, and unfold. 3. Place the square map side up, with the crease you made in step 1 running from side to side. Don’t flatten the square. It should stand a little like a tent. Pinch the top right corner and the bottom right corner along their fold lines, and bring them together. Repeat on the left side.…

How is Earth like a boiled egg, an onion, or a peach? If Earth were a peach, its inner core would be the pit. But this pit is a solid ball made mostly of iron. And it’s big—just a little smaller than our moon—and as hot as the surface of the sun. The liquid outer core goes all around the solid inner core. It’s mostly made of molten iron and sloshes and swirls like an ocean. Earth’s thickest layer is the mantle. It’s made of hot, heavy rock that flows slowly, like taffy or tar. Bits of the rock melt in some places and form liquid magma. If the magma pushes up and breaks through to Earth’s surface, it can create a volcano. We live on the crust, Earth’s outermost…

How old is Earth? Really, really old—4.54 billion years old. Humans—and other animals—have been around only a teeny, tiny bit of that time. To see just how tiny, grab 45 index cards or old playing cards and some colored markers. What to do: Separate the cards into 6 stacks, one with 1 card, one with 2 cards, one with 3 cards, one with 14 cards, one with 15 cards, and the last with 10 cards. Color the edges and the top card of the 6 stacks. Use a different color for each stack. Put the stacks together to make one big stack in this order. The stack with 1 card on the bottom, then the 2 cards, the 3 cards, the 14 cards, the 15 cards, and the 10 cards…