Vocabulary Notes from Social Studies

Nation: another word for country.

Continents: continuous mass of land, mainland (big piece of land)

Borders: A border is a line between two countries (nations) and sometimes there is a fence or wall there. You can also use the word “boundary” in the same place.

Landforms: Landforms are shapes of land, such as mountains, valleys, rivers, and lakes.

Plains: The plains are flat or rolling land without trees. I was born on the plains and it makes me feel happy when I can see very far. There is lots of grass growing there.

Coasts: A coast is the place where the ocean meets the land.

For lakes, we call it the “shore”. For rivers, we call it the “bank”.

Ports: Vancouver is a busy port where many ships (freighters) come to bring “goods” for trade.

Trading: Trading is when we exchange things with each other.

Goods: Goods are manufactured things that we trade, such as cars or cameras or chocolate bars. Materials are non-manufactured things we trade, such as trees, coal, oil.

Transportation: Transportation is cars, trains, buses, ships, planes, bicycles, feet, skateboards, roller blades, or anything we use to move ourselves or our things.

Standard of living: The standard of living is pretty high in Canada. The standard is a combination of all the important things in life, such as quality of water, quality of food, available transportation, medical care etc..

Developed nations: The developed nations are ones with good living standards, industry, farming, transportation etc.. The developing nations are working to improve the living standard and haven’t finished everything yet.

Fertilizers: Fertilizer is a substance (as manure [cows, pigs, chickens] or a chemical mixture) used to make soil more fertile (grow more easily).