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Unit 3 Gifts of Nature 

About the unit 

Other than animals and plants, we come across many things in nature such as water and food. They are precious resources for our healthy living. This unit explores water and food. We must aim to eat healthy meals and drink clean water. Staying clean and exercising helps us feel good and stay healthy. We must also learn to conserve our Earth’s resources for the future. 73



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Note to the teacher

This unit is about ‘Gifts of Nature’. The key concepts covered in these chapters are described below. 

Chapter 7: Water — A Precious Gift highlights how rainfall provides us with the precious gift of water, which is then stored in different ways. We ensure the cleanliness of this water and distribute it to households. Each household stores water for daily use, employing it in numerous ways. However, challenges arise regarding both the quality and quantity of water. To address these issues, we implement various measures aimed at conserving water resources.

Chapter 8: Food We Eat helps us understand the vital role of food in maintaining our health. We consume a diverse range of foods obtained from various sources. Each food item provides essential nutrients that benefit our bodies in unique ways. Our various cultures possess valuable knowledge about the nutritional value of different foods and offer guidance on making healthy dietary choices.

Chapter 9: Staying Healthy and Happy emphasises the importance of maintaining cleanliness and good health. We acquire essential principles of hygiene and cleanliness, ensuring tidiness in our homes and surroundings. Regular exercise becomes a part of our routine, promoting both physical fitness and emotional well-being. By understanding and following the established rules and regulations of our environment, we protect ourselves from potential harm 

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  •  Plan a ‘Food Mela’ in the class; try to display a variety of food items, e.g., grains, spices, fruits, vegetables, etc.  
  • Organise an exhibition on a variety of containers and vessels used to store water; you can display pictures too.
  •  Keep handy authentic and age–appropriate short videos and films, storybooks and poems related to food, water, cleanliness and healthy habits.  
  • Visits or Visitors: Plan a visit to different sources of water in your neighbourhood with safety. Invite a yoga instructor to demonstrate yogasanas for good health; invite a health practitioner to talk to the children about maintaining cleanliness and hygiene; invite parents and community members to share and talk about their traditional cuisines during the food mela . 


Chapter 7

Water – A Precious Gift

Rain, rain, come again!


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What comes down, 

But never goes up?


Watch the sky every day for a week. Will it rain? Your guess may be right on some days, and on some days it may be wrong. Are there any clues that help you guess if it will rain? Ask an elder about how they guess. Write down the clues . 


write

I think it will rain today because … (write at least 2 clues)  

...........................................................

............................................................
I think it will not rain today because … (write at least 2 clues ) 
...........................................................

............................................................

Here comes the rain!

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Note to the teacher  The first part of this chapter can be done whenever it rains in your area. Children may freely observe, question, make guesses, discuss, draw and record their observations.

ACTIVITY 1

  • Ask yourself as many questions as you can about the rain.
  •  Is it a heavy rain or a light one?
  •  Are the raindrops big or small?
  •  Do they come down fast or slow?
  •  Is the rain so heavy that you do not see the water 
  • drops, but only lines or sheets of water?
  •  Is the rain falling straight down? Is it slanting or 
  • changing its direction? Guess why.
  •  Collect the rainwater in a vessel. Does it look clean or dirty?

DRAW

  • Draw a picture of the rain that you observed . 


  • Do you think it will rain again today? Or tomorrow? Why do you think so ?
  • Did it rain only in your area or in other nearby places as well? Make a guess, then ask and find out .
  • Find some songs about the rain or make up one, in your language or any other. Sing some songs about the rain. 
  • Did the rain make you happy? Did it make everyone happy?   

What happened to the rainwater ?


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When it rained, a lot of water fell to the ground. Where did all this water go? Here is the rain falling on different surfaces. Imagine what happens to the rainwater on different surfaces. Does the rainwater get absorbed into the soil, collect in puddles or flow away? Have you ever wondered whether it joins a small stream or a river? What happens after the rain stops and the sun comes out? What happens to all this water? Make your own guesses. When rainwater gets soaked into the soil, it may slowly flow under the soil to join a stream or a pond. Some of the water gets stored under the ground between the rocks and the soil. The water in our wells comes from this underground water. Water flowing in a stream later joins rivers. Some of the water gathers in puddles, ponds and lakes and also in the seas and oceans. 

  • Is there a stream, river, pond or lake near your village or city? Find out its name and some information about it. Visit it and draw its picture. Draw any trees, birds or animals that you see around it. 
  •  Find a poem about a river and sing it in the class.  

Water is a precious gift!  


Water is a gift that falls from the sky. This gift reaches our homes in special ways. How do we care for this gift? How do we store it? What do we do with it? Let us go indoors and find out. On most days, Surya and Barkha get water from the taps at home. At school too, they get water from taps. All these taps get water through pipes. From where does the water come into these pipes? Surya and Barkha followed the pipes and found that there was a tank on the roof. Now they are puzzled with how the water came into the tank in the first place .
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Note to the Teacher 

The water cycle will be introduced only in Class 4. For now, let children notice that water remaining on hard surfaces gets dried up in the sun. Rainwater that sinks in the soil is most important, as it recharges our sources of water and helps plants grow .

DISCUSS


Where do you get water from?  

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Do you get water from a tap? If yes, ask the elders in your home from where the water comes into the tap. They may tell you about a tank high up on the terrace or some distance away.  

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Did you find out about any tanks where the water is stored? How did water reach those tanks? Are there some bigger pipes which bring the water to this tank? Where do these pipes come from? 
 

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Do you get water from a well or a borewell? Observe how water is drawn from the well. It could be using a pulley or a hand pump or an electric pump. Guess again where the water in the well comes from. 
 



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  • Do you get water delivered in a tanker? If yes, find out where the tankers bring water from. Does your water come from a well, river or lake near your village or city  
  • Do you know anyone who faces difficulty in getting water every day? 


Water in Our Daily Lives  


write

  • List all the activities you can think of for which we need water .
  • How many mugs of water do you need to brush your teeth? How much water do you use to take a shower?  
Have you ever faced a situation when you did not get any water? What did you do then? One day it happened to Surya and Barkha too. Do you know what they did? 
 


Ask your grandparents or any elder.
  • How did they get water? Did they use water in the same way as you do? 
  • How did they store water? 
  • Write a short story about what you found out .  


When we know that we do not get water all the time then we store it. In some places, people do not get running water through taps and pipes in their homes. They have to bring the water from a river or well. Sometimes it is delivered through water tankers and stored at home. Many years ago, there were no pipes or taps anywhere in the world. So people learned to make containers or vessels to store water. Here are some vessels that we use now-a-days for storing water at home. They are made of different materials. Ask your grandparents or any elder:
 • How did they get water? Did they use water in the same way as you do? 
• How did they store water?
• Write a short story about what you found out. Clay pot Copper vessel Steel pot Glass 

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AVTIVITY 3

Put up an exhibition  

  • Identify different vessels used to keep water in your home. 
  • Ask the elders in your family what types of vessels they stored water in. 
  • Were they different from what we use now? 
  • Did the vessels have different names? 
  • On a separate sheet of paper draw a picture of any vessel that you find interesting and write its name in your language. 
  • Put up an exhibition of these pictures in your classroom with the help of your teacher. 
  • Walk around and observe the drawings by your classmates 
  •  How many different kinds of vessels have been drawn? 
  • Did you find any patterns on the vessels?     Screenshot 2024-07-16 151858


Stop for a moment and think!  

  • Water comes down to earth as rain. 
  • It slowly fills up our many sources— streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, wells, groundwater, etc. 
  •  From these sources we bring water to our homes in many ways. 
  • We store it in many ways. 
  • We use it in many ways. 
  • What happens to water after we use it .   


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Water helps us in keeping things clean. This is very important for our health. But after we use it, the water becomes dirty. We cannot use dirty water for drinking or cooking. But we can reuse the waste water for watering our plants or for flushing toilets. Let us strive to reduce our use of water and reuse water whenever possible.

We should not add too much soap and other such chemicals in water. Let us take care of this precious gift from the sky!  


Every drop counts 


Water is considered sacred because it is absolutely essential for our survival. We cannot live more than 3 days without drinking water. This is the reason we first offer water to people who come to our home. In some places, where it rains very little and there are no big water bodies, people have to walk for long distances to get water 

Don’t you think everyone must get clean drinking water anywhere, anytime? 


Take action  


Offer clean drinking water to whoever comes to your door. It could be people who provide us postal or sanitation services. In many places, there is a tradition of keeping pots of water outside homes so that anybody feeling thirsty can have water. This is particularly so in the hot summer months. 
 

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ACTIVITY 4


Prepare a birdbath — offer water to birds in the hot summer months . 


A birdbath contains water in a shallow plate for birds to drink and cool down .
  • Take a shallow and wide container (an old big bowl or a base of an old pot or a bucket, less than 10 cm deep).
  • Keep some stones in it for birds to perch. You may make the sides sloping by adding some smaller pebbles. Smaller pebbles also help insects to use this water .
  • Add fresh water and keep the bowl in your yard, balcony or terrace.  
  • Change the water frequently. 
  • Clean the birdbath with a scrubber twice a week. Do not use this scrubber for kitchen utensils; reserve it for the garden .
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Let us reflect

A. Write

1. You waited for rain and watched how raindrops fell to the ground. You collected rainwater and observed if it was clean or dirty. You saw what happened to the rainwater that fell in different places. Now write a few lines on your observations of the rain.
2. You found out the name and some information about a stream, river, well, pond or lake near your place. Write it in a few lines: Is this water used for drinking? If yes, how is this water carried to your home? If it is not used, why not? Was it used in the past?

B. Draw

Draw a picture of your birdbath. Write the names of the birds and insects that come to drink water from your birdbath  

C Discuss

Water is very precious. We should be cautious about how we use it. We should not waste even a drop of water. Discuss among yourselves and list the activities in your house or outside, due to which water gets polluted or wasted. How can we avoid wastage of water? Think of three solutions with your group and write them in your notebook