Where our food and water come from
Class 4 EVS · Food, farming and water · 37 questions with answers
Class 4 traces food back past the shop to the farm, and water back past the tap to the rain. Both are about following a chain of steps, which is the reasoning skill the year is really teaching.
- Traces a familiar food back to the plant or animal it comes from
- Puts the steps of the water cycle in order
- Explains why a step in a chain matters
Exercise 1 of 4 · 12 questions
Where does each food come from? Write the plant or animal.
Write the answer · Warm-up
Here’s one done for you
rice → the paddy plant. Rice is the seed of the paddy plant after the husk has been removed. Children often answer 'the shop' or 'the field' - both true and neither the answer. Ask 'and before that?' until you reach a plant or an animal.
- 1)rice
- 2)milk
- 3)sugar
- 4)mustard oil
- 5)honey
- 6)cotton cloth
- 7)wool
- 8)silk
- 9)dal
- 10)jaggery
- 11)coconut oil
- 12)paper
Answers
- 1) the paddy plant
- 2) cows or buffaloes
- 3) sugarcane
- 4) mustard seeds
- 5) bees
- 6) the cotton plant
- 7) sheep
- 8) silkworms
- 9) pulse plants such as arhar or moong
- 10) sugarcane
- 11) coconuts
- 12) trees (wood pulp)
Exercise 2 of 4 · 4 questions
Put the steps of the water cycle in order. Number them 1 to 4.
Put in order · Guided
Here’s one done for you
B comes first because nothing happens until the sun heats the water. Then D (it rises), A (it falls), C (it flows back). The word 'cycle' is the clue - the last step leads back to the first, which is why C ends at the sea where B began.
- 1)A. The clouds cool and rain falls.
- 2)B. The sun heats water in the sea and rivers.
- 3)C. The rain water flows into rivers and back to the sea.
- 4)D. The water turns into vapour and rises into the sky, forming clouds.
Answers
- 1) B, D, A, C
Exercise 3 of 4 · 11 questions
Answer in one sentence.
Write the answer · Practice
Here’s one done for you
Why do farmers need rain? → because crops need water to grow, and rain is how most fields get it. The answer has two halves: the fact, and the link back to the question. An answer that stops at 'because crops need water' has left out why rain specifically, and Class 4 marks the link.
- 1)Why do farmers need rain?
- 2)Why is a well dug deep?
- 3)Why should we not throw rubbish into a river?
- 4)Why does food come to the city from villages?
- 5)Why do people in a desert build houses with thick walls and small windows?
- 6)Why are houses in hilly areas given sloping roofs?
- 7)Why do fishermen go out to sea early in the morning?
- 8)Why is a canal dug from a river to the fields?
- 9)Why do villages usually grow up near a river or a well?
- 10)Why does a city need more water than a village of the same size?
- 11)Why do we boil water before drinking it in the rainy season?
Answers
- 1) Because crops need water to grow, and rain is how most fields get it.
- 2) Because water is found underground, and the well has to reach down to it.
- 3) Because it makes the water dirty for the people and animals who use it further downstream.
- 4) Because there is not enough land in cities to grow crops, so food is grown in villages and carried in.
- 5) Because thick walls and small windows keep the heat of the day out and the house cool inside.
- 6) So that heavy rain and snow slide off instead of collecting on the roof.
- 7) Because the sea is calmer then and the catch has to reach the market fresh.
- 8) So that river water can be carried to fields that the rain alone would not water.
- 9) Because people need water every day for drinking, washing, animals and crops.
- 10) Because a city has far more people, factories and vehicles packed into the same space.
- 11) Because rain water carries mud and germs into wells and tanks, and boiling kills the germs.
Exercise 4 of 4 · 10 questions
Write True or False. If it is false, write the correct sentence.
Write the answer · Challenge
Here’s one done for you
Rain water is salty like sea water. -> False. When the sun heats the sea, only the water rises as vapour and the salt stays behind. That is why rain is fresh even though it came from a salty sea, and it is the step children most often miss in the water cycle.
- 1)The sun drives the water cycle.
- 2)Rain water is salty like sea water.
- 3)Groundwater is the water stored under the ground.
- 4)A river always flows from the sea towards the mountains.
- 5)Evaporation turns water into vapour.
- 6)All the water on Earth can be drunk.
- 7)A dam stores river water for later use.
- 8)Crops in India depend mostly on the monsoon rain.
- 9)Water in a covered tank goes bad faster than in an open one.
- 10)Rainwater harvesting means collecting rain instead of letting it run away.
Answers
- 1) True.
- 2) False - rain water is not salty; the salt is left behind in the sea when water evaporates.
- 3) True.
- 4) False - a river flows from the mountains down to the sea.
- 5) True.
- 6) False - most of it is sea water, which is too salty to drink.
- 7) True.
- 8) True.
- 9) False - covering a tank keeps dust and insects out, so the water stays clean longer.
- 10) True.
While your child works
- 'And before that?' is the most useful prompt on this sheet. Children stop at the shop or the field and need one more step.
- The water cycle is easier standing at a window in the rain than on paper. Point at where the water is going.
- In the last exercise, the link back to the question is where the mark is - not the fact on its own.