Billy has quite a good grasp of the idea of world time zones. He knows that different parts of the world are at different times and can tell you facts like when it's midnight in London and America (I'm not sure which part of America). We've never done a "lesson" on time zones - it's come about mainly due to him "needing" to know. Partly its due to sites such as Club Penguin and Webkinz. Since they are American sites, the competitions etc close at American times, so for us Aussies, we have to translate. So there's been lots of discussions & demonstrations about that as he initially tried to wrap his mind around it.
We have friends in London & America, so it makes it far more real to him to be able to say things like "It's night time in London, D will be in bed now; A will just be getting up now" etc.
Sites like these have been handy as well:
http://www.worldtimezone.com/
http://www.die.net/earth/
At the observatory we also got to watch mechanised models of the earth, moon & sun, so that also added to his understanding of it all.
Relevant & useful - natural learning at its finest.
3 comments:
It totally is natural learning at it's best. I may have to share our 'natural learning' moment about something similar actually because it really was an eye opener and led to a big investigation!
Yup! We have friends and relatives in different time zones, and the fact that two of our boys' closest friends are in Australia right now visiting friends and family (the Mom was born there) has led to my boys learning a lot about time zones. They find the idea of their friends in AU going to bed when we are wide awake quite amusing.
Love it. :-)
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