What is a Leap Year?
A leap year is a year that has one extra day. On the Gregorian calendar, the standard calendar for most of the world, common years have 365 days. A leap year, however, has 366 days, with the extra day designated as February 29. A leap year generally occurs every four years in the years evenly divisible by four. Leap year was originally designed to keep the calendar year synchronized with the solar year, or the time it takes the earth to complete its orbit about the sun. Because the solar year is about a quarter of a day longer than the calendar year, the seasons will not match the calendar after many years have passed. The Gregorian calendar was specifically created to keep the vernal equinox, or the time when the sun is directly above the Earth’s equator, as close to March 21 as possible so that Easter celebrations will coincide with the equinox. The idea of adding a leap year to the calendar is nothing new. The Egyptian ruler King Ptolemy III first added an extra day to the year back
Five thousand years ago the Egyptians divided the year into twelve months and each month is divided into a certain number of days. Three years out of every four, a year has 365 days in it. In the fourth year, there are 366 days. This is a leap year. Every leap year an extra day is added to the month of February. Normally, February has 28 days in it, but in a leap year it has 29 days. The purpose of this is to make up the difference between the calendar year and the solar year. It is convenient for us in daily life to go by a calendar year of 365 days. The solar year, which measures time by the movement of the Earth round the Sun, is actually 365 days and about six hours long. In four years, these six hours a year make an extra day, so we have a year with an extra day in it, a leap year. Calendars sometimes show the positions of planets and stars and the phases of the moon.
A Leap Year is when the calendar year is extended to have 366 days – adding February 29th to the year. This is done to put the calendar year into line with the length of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, so that the seasons always occur during the same months each year. The calendar year is 365 days long, unless the year is exactly divisible by 4, in which case an extra day is added to February to make the year 366 days long. If the year is the last year of a century, eg. 1700, 1800, 1900, 2000, then it is only a leap year if it is exactly divisible by 400. Therefore, 1900 wasn’t a leap year but 2000 was. Fun things to do for Leap Year: Make a reptile/amphibian craft with Crafts for Kids Guide – lots to choose from Send an animated Leap Year Card.
