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Geography · Key Stage 1 · The School
Seven continents
AFRICA, ANTARCTICA, ASIA, AUSTRALIA (Oceania), EUROPE, NORTH AMERICA, SOUTH AMERICA. Asia is by far the biggest and holds the most people. Antarctica has no permanent residents at all. Point to each one on a globe and say its name out loud — that is how they stick.
Five oceans
PACIFIC (the biggest, bigger than all the land put together), ATLANTIC, INDIAN, SOUTHERN and ARCTIC. Trace a finger from Britain west across the Atlantic and you reach North America; keep going and you cross the Pacific.
Where we are
Britain is in Europe, in the north-west, on the edge of the Atlantic. Find it, then find somewhere you have family or have heard of, and say which continent that is in. A world map only becomes useful once you can place yourself on it.
On a world map, put a finger on Portugal and trace east across Europe to the Ural Mountains in Russia, then keep going into Asia. Your finger never left the land. Europe and Asia are one continuous landmass, divided by an agreement rather than by water — which is why Russia appears in both, and why some countries teach six continents rather than seven.
Why the number of continents depends who you ask
Most schools in Britain teach seven continents. Some countries teach six, joining Europe and Asia into Eurasia, because there is no ocean between them and the line through the Ural mountains is one people drew rather than one the land insists on. Others teach five. None of them is wrong: a continent is a large landmass, and "large" and "separate" are judgements. That is worth knowing early, because it is the first time most people meet a fact that turns out to be a convention.