Grade 3 · Social Studies · 2 minutes
Seven continents, five oceans
Seven continents. Five oceans. One amazing planet.
Key terms
- Continent
- One of the seven giant pieces of land on Earth, such as Asia or Africa.
- Ocean
- One of the five huge bodies of water that cover about seventy percent of our planet.
- Equator
- The line around the middle of Earth that splits it into north and south.
- Hemisphere
- Half of the Earth, such as the Northern Hemisphere or the Southern Hemisphere.
- Pacific Ocean
- The biggest ocean, so large that all the continents could fit inside it.
Transcript
Imagine you could fly high above the Earth. From way up here, our planet looks mostly blue, with giant pieces of land. Let's explore the seven continents and five oceans!
To see them all at once, we can unroll the globe into a flat map. Here they are: North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Antarctica.
Continents come in very different sizes. Asia is the biggest, with almost a third of all the land on Earth. Australia is the smallest continent, but it's still huge!
Now for the water. Water covers about seventy percent of our planet, and it's split into five oceans: the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Indian, the Arctic, and the Southern Ocean.
The Pacific is the biggest ocean by far. It's so big that all the continents together could fit inside it, with room to spare!
See this line around the middle? That's the equator. It splits Earth into the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere.
So where are we? The United States is in North America, in the Northern and Western Hemispheres. It sits between two oceans: the Pacific to the west, and the Atlantic to the east.
Let's recap! Seven continents, with Asia the largest and Australia the smallest. Five oceans, and the Pacific is the biggest. And the equator splits Earth into north and south.
Sources
Every fact in the video, and where it comes from.
- 1education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/Continent
- There are seven continents; from largest to smallest: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, Australia.
- Asia is the largest continent and has almost a third of the world's land.
- Australia is the smallest continent (just under 8.5 million square kilometers).
- 2oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/howmanyoceans.html
- There is one global ocean, divided into five named basins: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic and Southern; the U.S. recognizes the Southern as the fifth ocean.
- 3oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/oceanwater.html
- The ocean covers about 71 percent of Earth's surface.
- 4oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/pacific-size.html
- The Pacific is the largest ocean, covering more than 30 percent of Earth's surface.
- 5britannica.com/place/Pacific-Ocean
- The Pacific Ocean is larger than all of Earth's land area combined.
- 6education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/equator
- The equator divides Earth into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
- 7education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/hemisphere
- The United States is in North America, in the Northern and Western Hemispheres, between the Pacific Ocean (west) and the Atlantic Ocean (east).
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