Teaching Kids to Read and Write

  Smile! What do you see? A mouth, lips and teeth. Teeth help us to bite into our food and cut it up into smaller lumps. Different shaped teeth have different jobs. Some are shaped like spades and we use them to bite into food. Some are sharp and pointed, so as to shred the lumps of food into smaller bits. Then there are wide, flat teeth at the back of the mouth, which mash the food into a pulp. When we are born, we have no teeth that can be seen yet. The teeth are all hidden under our gums. When they start to develop, they can make the gums sore. This is called teething. We have more than one set of teeth. As small children, we get a set of milk teeth. There are only twenty of these milk teeth. They start to wobble and fall out when we are about six or seven. Then we get our next set of teeth. These adult teeth are much bigger and are all we get for the rest of our lives. So it is very important to keep them healthy. Inside the mouth, it is dark and wet. There are some living thin...

  The ground under our feet seems solid and hard, but in fact there are lots of things under it. We live on a planet called Earth, which was formed a long time ago. The Earth is round in shape, like a ball. It is covered by a thin crust of rock. Rock is made up of things called minerals. This is one sort of rock, called granite. You can see the different minerals in the granite. This building is made from a sort of rock called limestone. Limestone is good for building things as it is strong and can be carved into shapes. Where limestone is found, there are often underground caves and holes. These are made by rain. Little by little, the rain digs caves and tunnels into the rock. As the rain drips, it mixes with some of the minerals from the limestone and together they form columns in the caves. The columns that hang down are called stalactites and those that stick up are called stalagmites. Explorers investigate underground caves and tunnels. They need hard hats, torches and sometim...

  Antarctica is the continent at the southern end of the Earth. It is big and very cold, with tall mountains and deep holes. The South Pole is at the farthest south point of all. It is very hard to get to the South Pole, and in 1900 (nineteen hundred) no one had been there yet. At that time, a man called Clement Markham was planning a trip to go to Antarctica. He chose a man called Robert Scott to head the trip. Scott was a sailor and a very determined person. On the trip, Scott and the rest of the explorers came very close to the South Pole, but they did not quite get there. They made maps of the parts of Antarctica that they had explored When they got home, Scott was made a captain and the trip became famous. All the same, Captain Scott was not satisfied. He was determined to go back to Antarctica and to get to the South Pole. So this time, he planned a trip to the Antarctic himself. He tried to think of everything. He had biscuits made that did not freeze in the cold! In 1910 (n...

  Africa is a big continent. In the north of Africa is the Sahara Desert. There is lots of sand and it is very hot. There is no rain, so it is difficult for anyone to live there. There is a big river in North Africa. This river comes out of the Sahara Desert. It is the biggest river in Africa and it is called the Nile. From the Nile, the farmers make the land grow crops. The crops grow well and are used for food. Farmers have lived and grown crops next to the Nile for thousands and thousands of years. The land further away from the Nile does not get wet so crops cannot grow there. It is a desert. All the living things in this part of Africa depend on the River Nile. Some buildings by the Nile are five thousand years old. When an army from Rome came and took the Nile lands, the buildings were already three thousand years old. But where does the Nile come from? Where does it start? Many years ago, no one knew where it came from. It seemed to come out of the desert. Explorers set out ...