Social studiesGrade 3ages 8–9
🌊 Our seas
This lesson comes from Israeli geography class: two seas border the same small country from opposite sides, one an ordinary sea in the west, the other one of the saltiest, lowest bodies of water on Earth in the east.
Try this lesson freeNo card needed. The first lesson is free.
Download on the App StoreWhat your child learns
- The Mediterranean Sea is in the west of the land — toward sunset.
- The Dead Sea is in the east, and it is very low — the lowest dry land on Earth.
- The Dead Sea is very salty. We don't swim in it like a usual sea — we float.
- Don't swap them: the Mediterranean is not as low as the Dead Sea, and the Dead Sea is not in the west.
The mistake most kids make here
Thinking the Dead Sea is high, or the Mediterranean is in the east.
Try one question
In the west
- the Dead Sea
- the Mediterranean
- a sweet mountain lake
Answer
the Mediterranean — Yes! The Mediterranean is in the west, at sunset.
How Maya teaches it
Your child tells Maya what they did in class. She teaches this topic at her desk, asks questions with tappable answers, and when the answer is wrong she explains why that answer was tempting instead of saying “try again”. She remembers what did not land and comes back to it.
Your child has it when they can: Say where the Mediterranean is, and why the Dead Sea is special in height.
How to help at home
For a family outside Israel, place both seas on a map together first: the Mediterranean is the large sea that also touches southern Europe and North Africa, while the Dead Sea is a much smaller inland lake bordered by Israel and Jordan.
The Dead Sea earns its name honestly: it's so salty that almost nothing can live in it, and people float rather than swim, a fun, concrete detail for a child to hold onto instead of just its location.
It's also the lowest point of dry land anywhere on Earth, a striking fact worth pairing with the word lowest the way you might pair a mountain with highest, since a superlative sticks better than a direction alone.
A good sign they've got it: they don't swap the two; they know the Mediterranean is the everyday sea to the west, and the Dead Sea is the unusually salty, low one to the east.
Questions parents ask
- Why is my child learning Israeli geography in an English lesson?
- This is drawn from the homeland studies curriculum in Israeli schools, which children there study regardless of which language they speak at home.
- What actually makes the Dead Sea dead?
- Its extremely high salt content, which makes it too harsh for fish or most plants to survive in, though people swim, or rather float, in it without any trouble.
- Is the Dead Sea actually a sea?
- It's technically a salt lake, though it's long been called a sea by tradition, a fine detail worth mentioning but not the main point of this lesson.
- How does Maya teach this?
- Maya asks which sea sits to the west and offers real options, so the location of each sea gets practiced directly rather than blurred together.
No card needed. The first lesson is free.
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Sources: Israeli Ministry of Education – Homeland, society and civics curriculum, elementary (in Hebrew)