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Children's knowledge of the Earth

Children everywhere are fascinated by the sky, stars and Sun. Emerging evidence from cultures throughout the world suggests that even young children can acquire knowledge of the Earth and its place in the Universe.

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Figure 1: A six-year-old's drawing of the Earth as a lower hemisphere where people live, topped by an upper hemisphere consisting of the sky.
Figure 2: Examples of the type of illustrations used to determine what children know about the Earth's shape, the location of the sky and where people can live9.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to M. Blades, V. Girotto and A. Martin for their comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this article. Some of the research reported here was carried out with the support of the Australian Research Council and the UK Economic and Social Research Council.

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Correspondence to Michael Siegal.

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Siegal, M., Nobes, G. & Panagiotaki, G. Children's knowledge of the Earth. Nature Geosci 4, 130–132 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1094

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