The Sun gives our world light and heat. The heat is strongest around the middle of the world. This means that lands near the Equator and the two Tropics are hot most of the time.
Where the Sun's heat is much less strong near the Poles it is cold for most of the year. This is partly because the Sun's rays are spread over a much larger area.
Places lying between the poles and Tropics have much more changeable weather. They usually have four seasons - winter, spring, summer and autumn. Summers are warm, but nit as hot places near the Equator. Winter are cold, but not as icy as near the Poles. These large areas, called zones, are known as 'temperate zones'. Temperate means neither very hot very cold.
Not all places in the world fit into this pattern of hot and cold. You can sometimes find snow on the Equator! Very high places, like mountain peaks, are much colder than low places. For this reason, high mountain can be cold and snow - capped even when they are in the hottest parts of the world.
The world's axis is an imaginary line that runs right through the center of the Earth from the North Pole to the South Pole. This imaginary line isn't upright like a flagpole, it is tilted because the would leans to one side.
As the Earth travels around the Sun, first the top half and then the bottom half of the world leans towards the Sun.
When the top half leans towards the Sun, it gets more heat then the bottom half. This means that when it is the summer season in a country like Canada, in the top half of the world, it is winter in New Zealand in the bottom half.
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