Class 5 Environmental Studies Chapter 9: Rhythms of Nature

A year apart

Saba hugs her friend Aparna at the school gate. They have not met for a whole year. Aparna is taller now, and her hair is short. Saba has learnt to play a few tunes on a guitar. Even the saplings by the gate have grown. Nothing has stayed exactly as it was.

Some changes take years

Look around and you will find slow changes. A child grows taller year by year. A sapling becomes a shady tree. A rock by the river wears down. These are so slow that a single day shows you nothing at all.

Some changes take minutes

Other changes are quick. A cloud slides across the sun and the ground goes dim. A puddle dries up on a hot afternoon. The colour of the evening sky shifts while you watch it. Blink, and you may miss one.

Changes that come back

A third kind of change returns. Leaves fall from a tree, and new ones open later. A flower dries up, and next year another blooms. Morning follows night, over and over. A change that keeps coming back is called a pattern.

The oldest pattern of all

Day turns into night. Night turns into day. It has happened every single time, for as long as anyone can remember. The sun seems to rise in the east, climb across the sky and go down in the west. So is the sun travelling around us?

Two children and a question

Ravi's class tries a game. One child stands still in the middle and is the Sun. Another stands a little away and is the Earth. The Earth child turns slowly on the spot. While she can see the Sun she says "day". The moment the Sun is behind her she says "night".

The turn is the answer

She never walks anywhere. She only turns. Yet her day and night keep changing. That turning on the spot is called rotation. Our Earth does the same thing. One full turn gives us one day and one night.

A torch and a globe

Now try it with objects. Put a globe on the table and shine a torch at one side of it. The torch is standing for the Sun. Keep the torch still. Turn the globe slowly with your hand and watch the lit side move.

What the torch shows

Only half the globe is lit at any moment. That half is having day. The other half is dark, and there it is night. The torch never moved. The globe did. In the sky it is the same: the sun stays put and the Earth turns.

Our model of the Earth

A globe is a small model of our planet. It is round like a ball, as the Earth is. The blue on it is water. Seas and oceans cover about three parts out of every four. Oceans are wide and open. A sea is smaller and land holds it partly in.

Morning here, midnight there

Because only half of the Earth is lit, our morning is somebody else's night. India wakes early in the village of Dong, in Arunachal Pradesh. The first sunlight of the country touches that place. At the same moment, far across the water, other people are fast asleep.

Scenario:

A class lists changes it has seen and how long each one took. A tooth falling out took weeks. A biscuit breaking took a second. A tree growing took years. Their teacher asks the class to sort the list another way: which changes come back and which do not. Morning follows night again and again. A broken biscuit does not mend. Meena sees that two different questions are being asked of one list. One is about how long a change takes, and the other is about whether it returns. The class marks the returning ones and calls them patterns.

Analysis:

One list and two questions. How long a change takes says nothing about whether it will happen again.

Activity:

List six changes you have seen. Mark how long each took and whether it returns.

Title:

Make your own day and night

Safety:

Do not shine the torch into anybody's eyes.

What You Notice:

Half the ball is always lit and half is always dark. Your sticker gets a day, then a night, then a day again, although the torch never moved. One full turn of the ball gives your sticker one day and one night, just as one turn of the Earth does for us.

Dong in Arunachal Pradesh is the first place in India that the morning sunlight reaches.

Water covers about three parts out of every four on the surface of our planet.

Why night comes — The Earth turns, the sun stays — Say it whenever somebody tells you the sun is going down.

Three kinds of change — Slow, quick, and coming back — A growing tree, a drying puddle, and morning after night.

A notebook on the garden bench

Saba and Aparna sit in the school garden with a fat notebook. It is their seasons' journal. All year they have written in it, a few lines at a time. Today they turn its pages from the first entry to the last. Slowly a picture of the whole year builds up in front of them.

What goes into a journal

A journal entry is short. A drawing will do. So will a pasted leaf or three quick lines. The girls made one entry each term, always watching the same corner of the garden. Watching one place again and again is what shows you the change.

Five things they watched

They kept to five themes. Plant life, such as flowers, fruit and falling leaves. Birds, animals and insects. The air, the heat and the light. Water, puddles and the pond. And what people did: clothes, food, work and festivals.

The year in four blocks

Their teacher drew a big chart on the classroom wall. It had four columns for four parts of the year. April to June. July to September. October to December. January to March. Under each column the class wrote what it had seen.

Reading the chart across

Read the chart from left to right and the year tells a story. The air warms, then turns really hot. Rain arrives and the pond fills. Afterwards the air cools. Then the warming begins once more.

Did it happen last year too?

Aparna asks a good question. Was last year like this? Her grandmother says yes. Will next year be the same? Almost certainly. The whole round of changes repeats itself. It is a rhythm, not an accident.

The word for the rhythm

This repeating rhythm of the year has a name. We call it the seasons. A season is a part of the year with its own weather, its own plants and its own way of life.

Six seasons in our country

India counts six seasons, not four. Vasanta is spring. Grishma is summer. Varsha is the monsoon. Sharad is autumn. Hemant is the cool time before winter. Shishir is winter itself. Each one lasts about two months.

Everybody has their own names

These are not the only names. Every region names its seasons in its own language, and the months they cover shift a little from place to place. Ask at home what your seasons are called.

Winter is not one thing

Winter in Kerala is not winter in the Kashmir valley. One is mild, the other is deep and snowy. The monsoon in Assam pours down, while Rajasthan may get very little of it. The same season feels quite different in two places.

The wettest and the driest

Both extremes are in our own country. Mawsynram in Meghalaya is the rainiest place on the Earth. The Thar desert is among the driest land we have. One India, and both of these inside it.

Scenario:

A class starts a seasons' journal. They choose one tree in the school yard and visit it on the same day each month. Five things are noted: plants, animals, air and light, water, and what people do. After four months Arjun says nothing is happening. His teacher asks him to read his own first entry aloud. The tree had no new leaves then and has many now. The change was too slow to notice day by day. Arjun sees why the journal records the same place again and again. A slow change only becomes visible when two distant entries are put side by side.

Analysis:

Arjun saw nothing because he was comparing with yesterday. Reading the first entry against the fourth is what made four months of change appear.

Activity:

Pick one tree and record the same five things once a month. After three months, read your first entry against your last.

Title:

Start your own seasons' journal

Safety:

Pick a place you can reach safely, and take an adult with you if it is away from home.

What You Notice:

Two entries close together look almost alike. Four entries spread across the year look very different from one another. Reading them in order shows the warming, the heat, the rain and the cooling, and you can see that the round has begun again.

Mawsynram in Meghalaya gets more rain than any other place on the Earth.

The Thar desert and the rainiest spot on the planet both lie inside one country, India.

The six Indian seasons — Vasanta, Grishma, Varsha, Sharad, Hemant, Shishir — Spring, summer, monsoon, autumn, the cool time, and winter.

What to watch in a journal — Plants, creatures, sky, water, people — Five themes, one line each, and your entry is done.

The bird in the mango tree

Saba is visiting her cousins in a village in Odisha. Early one morning a koel calls from the mango tree. Her uncle looks up and smiles. "Time to get the seed ready," he says. Saba is puzzled. How can a bird tell anybody what month it is?

Signs before the rain

Her uncle explains. Farmers here have listened to that call for generations. When the koel sings, the rains are not far behind. There are other signs too. Ants carrying their eggs to higher ground often means water is coming.

Reading the sky and the ground

Nobody here waits for a calendar. People watch the clouds, the wind and the creatures around them. These signs are not perfect. Still, they have guided sowing and harvesting in villages for a very long time.

Every crop has its season

Crops are not all alike. Some do best in the cold months. Others want the heat of summer. Some are put into the ground in the rains, because they need plenty of water to grow. A farmer who sows the wrong crop at the wrong time gets very little back.

What we wear

Seasons change our cupboards too. Thin cotton in the heat. A raincoat and rubber slippers in the monsoon. Shawls, sweaters and socks when the cold sets in. Look at what your family is wearing and you can almost name the season.

What we eat

Food follows the year as well. Mangoes and watermelons belong to the hot months. Hot soups, gur and sesame sweets belong to the cold ones. Fresh greens come with the rains. Eating what the season gives is both cheaper and tastier.

Festivals follow the crops

Our festivals sit inside this rhythm. Many of them mark a sowing or a harvest. Some welcome a new year. Others simply celebrate the return of flowers. India is said to hold over a thousand festivals in a single year.

Four turns, four celebrations

Pongal and Makar Sankranti come in the cold of winter. Holi arrives in spring, when the flowers are out. Diwali falls in autumn, once the crops have been gathered. Baisakhi, Gudi Padwa, Vishu and Rongali Bihu greet a new year and a harvest together.

Songs for the seasons

There are songs for the seasons in every Indian language. Some call the rain. Some welcome the spring. Ask an older person at home to sing one for you, and write down a line of it.

Even the snakes have a season

In the monsoon, water fills the burrows and snakes come out into the open. Nag Panchami falls at that time of the year. It is a day for showing respect to these creatures and to the nature they belong to.

Life moves in circles

Seasons do more than change the weather. They tell plants when to flower, animals when to move, farmers when to sow and families what to cook and celebrate. Each turn comes back. Change is not something to fear. It is the way life moves.

Scenario:

Lakshmi farms a small field outside her village in Odisha. In June a koel begins calling from the neem tree. She takes it as her signal and gets the paddy seed ready. The rains arrive a fortnight later and the young plants go into the wet field. Through the monsoon the family weeds and watches the water. By November the crop is ready. They cut it, dry it and fill 7 sacks from each of their 4 plots. Two sacks are kept back for the house and the rest are carried to the market. In January the whole village cooks the new rice for Makar Sankranti. Lakshmi's daughter writes the dates of every step in her school notebook.

Analysis:

One crop links the reading of natural signs, the rhythm of the seasons, simple multiplication and a village festival.

Activity:

Ask an older person in your family which crop is grown near your home and in which months it is sown and cut. Draw a line for the year and mark both.

Title:

Make a rain measure

Safety:

Choose a plastic jar rather than glass, and ask an adult before you go on to a terrace.

What You Notice:

Some showers leave barely a line in the jar and others fill several centimetres. Your month's total will be much larger in the monsoon than in the cold months. Compare two months and you can see the season in your own numbers.

Farmers in Odisha begin sowing when they hear the koel calling from the trees.

India is said to hold over a thousand festivals in a single year.

Festivals and their seasons — Pongal cold, Holi flowers, Diwali harvest — Three festivals, three turns of the year, in order.

What a season decides — Sow, wear, eat, celebrate — Four ways the year's rhythm reaches into every home.