Continents of the World

Mr. Tra had a surprise. “Today we are going to study geography!” he said.

“What’s that?” asked Teddy.

“It is the study of places,” said Mr. Tra.

“Do we get to look at maps?” asked Grace.

“Big maps!” said Mr. Tra.  

He rolled a big map across his desk. “This map shows the continents of the world,” he said. “Can you see how many there are?”

“Seven!” yelled the students. They were right. There are seven continents on the Earth. They are often different colors on a map. They are pretty big, so they are easy to spot.

“The largest continent is Asia,” Mr. Tra explained.  “The smallest is Australia. It is sometimes called Oceania.”

“How are the continents different?” asked Teddy.

“Good question,” said Mr. Tra. “They are different in a lot of ways. One way is that they have different weather. Antarctica is very cold. Parts of Africa are very hot.”

“What are these other lines on the map?” asked Grace.

“Another good question,” said Mr. Tra. “Those are countries. Most of the continents are divided into countries. North America has 23 countries. Europe has 44.

“Geography is cool,” said Teddy.

“Let’s look at more maps tomorrow!” said Grace.