Continents and oceans — Earth science, 4–6 years
Earth has huge areas of land and huge areas of salt water. Continents and oceans help us talk about where places are.
Big land and big water
If you look at a globe, you can see broad pieces of land separated by broad stretches of blue water. The biggest land areas are called continents, and the biggest salt-water areas are called oceans. Islands are smaller pieces of land surrounded by water.
Why name them?
People needed a way to describe faraway places without pointing at them. Naming continents and oceans makes it easier to say where a journey, animal, country or island is. These names are useful labels, even though the land and water do not have sharp lines everywhere.
Finding an island
Imagine a toy boat starting on the coast of Portugal and travelling west across the Atlantic Ocean. First, it leaves the continent of Europe. Next, it stays on salt water and passes no large continent. If it reaches the Azores, it has arrived at islands: land surrounded by ocean.
A map is not the whole Earth
A child may think a blue map shows one flat ocean and the coloured parts show separate, floating continents. That is reasonable because maps use simple colours and cannot show all the water around every coast. In reality, oceans connect, and continents are parts of one solid Earth.
Finding places
Maps, globes and travel books use continents and oceans to help people find places. A family planning a trip can see whether a country is across an ocean or on the same continent. Scientists also use these large regions when they talk about animals, plants and seas.
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