There are several different ways that children between the ages six and eleven see the earth. The different ways are: a rectangular earth that is flat and you can fall off, a disc earth which is also flat any can fall off, a dual earth is "thought that one 'Earth' is flat which we are standing on and there is another 'Earth' in the sky that is round. Their answers revealed they saw the planet as flat when asked about 'the ground', but round when asked about 'the Earth' ", hollow sphere is where we live inside the earth on a flat area, flattened sphere is the "thought that the Earth was a flattened sphere so that there were areas on the top (and the bottom) where people could live", a sphere the way the earth really is, and mixed models in which models could not be constructed.
Many times the children think that the earth is flat because you aren't sliding all around because of gravity. At that age though they don't know much about gravitational pull so they think it has to be flat. Though they think it is flat they also think it is a sphere. The reason for this is because parents and teachers tell them it is a sphere. With this information you would think that if a child wasn't told the earth was a sphere they would think it was just flat with no distinct shape.
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It’s interesting to see how children view the world in many ways and this is just one example of learning they go through. A child simply see’s a flat surface and have yet to understand gravity, so of course they are going to think that the earth is flat. It’s really weird to think back and imagine me as that child because now I can’t imagine the earth anything else but round.
ReplyDeleteI think it is interesting to think back on all the things we learned. Including what shape the world is. Gravity at first would be a weird conccept to any child. So understanding it would take some time.
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