March 19, 2012
March 10, 2012
Summer football in March
Summer came early to Scarborough with the beautiful sun shining brightly in a cloudless sky. Much fun was had in the back garden of Weaponness House: photos to follow of Josh Wong & Daniel Sellars playing football. Mr Sutcliffe also joined in, proving his skills are not yet past their best.
March 8, 2012
Quote of the week – kind words and kind deeds
Okay, it’s a poem rather than a quote, but still rather lovely.
“Kind hearts are the gardens,
Kind thoughts are the roots,
Kind words are the flowers,
Kind deeds are the fruits.
Take care of your garden
and keep out the weeds. Fill it with sunshine,
Kind words and kind deeds.”
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator
February 29, 2012
Artist of the Week No. 4 – Josh Wong
PWS says, “Josh Wong could be Artist of the Week every week! No other student eats his breakfast then comes straight into the art room to work. No other student is always ahead of intermediate deadlines like him and certainly, no one has a quest for excellence quite like his. This project takes in the sights of downtown Hong Kong at night, both in observing the rushing traffic from the roadside and in contemplation at the tranquillity of the harbour. Josh has chosen a well know van Gogh painting to help him formulate an excellent final image.”
February 27, 2012
WOW! You did what?…
Have you seen Little Owls’ WOW board? If not, then check it out on this snapshot of the lovely board which celebrates little or big things in the lives of our pre-schoolers. It’s on show for all parents, teachers and children to see as they come to school. It may be something as simple as not crying when Dad dropped them off, or helping with jobs around the house at home, or reading a word, or looking after the new children in the class. Whatever the WOW, it helps children to know that they’ve done something to be proud of that is worth celebrating. Why not create your own WOW board at school or home? Done something good today? Then take a leaf out of Little Owls’ book and celebrate it!
February 22, 2012
It’s never too late to be who you might have been
A new feature, Quote of the Week. These are completely random. If you have a favourite quote, please add it by commenting below the post so that we can share them.
This week’s quote: “It’s never too late to be who you might have been”.
By George Eliot, better known as Mary Ann Evans, 1819 – 1880, author of Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss, amongst others.
Find out more about the English novelist on wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eliot
February 21, 2012
February 20, 2012
Welcome to Astronomy by Mr Middleton
Hello, I’m Mr. Middleton. I’m the science technician at Scarborough College. One of my hobbies is astronomy, which is the study of celestial objects such as stars, planets and galaxies. I’m going to be posting in our blog about all the interesting things you can see in the night sky over the course of a year, and what you can do if you are also interested in astronomy to get further information.
I’m going to start off with the night sky over this winter period. Looking at the stars in winter is great because it gets dark so early, you can easily see lots of stars by 6 o’clock at night. Here are two things to look out for over the winter period:
The Plough
The plough is a constellation, which means that it is a collection of stars that form a pattern in the sky. You might have already seen the Plough, it looks like a saucepan:
It will be visible low on the horizon at about 6 o’clock at night in February. The plough is a very useful constellation because people used to use the plough to navigate at night. Here’s how they did it. The two stars at the side of the “saucepan” shape point to a star called the pole star. The pole star is always at due North, no matter what time or day it is. Once you have found the plough in the sky, look at the stars at the edge of the pan shape and follow them up to the next brightest star you can see, shown in the picture below. This is the pole star. When you are looking at the pole star, you are facing North. In fact, most astronomers today still use the Plough to tell which way is north, so they know where to find other objects in the sky.
Planets
The next thing to look for over the next few months are two planets which are visible. You may have noticed two very bright stars in the South West at sunset. These are actually a planets. Jupiter is the one higher up and more to the South. Venus is lower on the horizon and nearer to the setting Sun.
Venus is a planet which is closer to the sun that our Earth, it is very hot – around 400 degrees Celcius on the surface. It’s atmosphere consists of clouds of sulphuric acid which reflect the sun light very well, which is why it looks so bright to us on Earth.
Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system and is very far away, over 500 million miles away. If you have a pair of binoculars, try looking at Jupiter through them. Even with a small pair, on a clear night you might be able to see some dots next to Jupiter. These are Jupiter’s moons. The Earth only has one moon, but Jupiter has four large moons called Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa. These are also known as the Galilean satellites because they were first discovered by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei in the year 1610. How many can you see? It helps if you live somewhere where there aren’t many street lights because the orange glow from towns can make the stars and planets look a lot dimmer than normal. If we look even closer at Jupiter through a powerful telescope, we would see the moons much closer:
That’s it for this blog post, I’ll do another one next month about the kinds of things we can see in the night sky at Spring time. In the mean time, if you are interested in Astronomy and want to do something extra, there is a great free program available online called Stellarium. It’s what I used to put some of the pictures into this blog post.
It’s very easy to use, and you can use it to show you what stars and planets are in the night sky throughout the year. So if there is a particular constellation or star that you want to know the name of, you can look it up on Stellarium. Alternatively there are loads of free apps available for smart phones that do the same thing. I personally use Google Skymap which you can get on the link below or by scanning the QR code. If you have an iPhone there are also plenty of free Skymap style apps available on the marketplace.
http://www.google.com/mobile/skymap/
Or scan this QR code with your mobile:
Hope you all have clear skies!
Kieron.
February 13, 2012
The Year of the Dragon 2012
The Chinese Year of the Dragon is in 2012. Astrology is part of Chinese life. In Chinese astrology dragon people excel. The dragon Chinese zodiac year is special.
Many people are looking forward to the Chinese zodiac year of 2012. Astrology is so important to the Chinese and the Chinese year of the dragon is so special.
Think about the dragon! In Chinese astrology the dragon is the only animal of the Chinese zodiac year that is not real. In Chinese astrology the dragon is quite special and very much revered. The dragon holds special significance for the Chinese people. More than 4,000 years ago, there were two large tribes and many smaller tribes in China. The tribes had animals as emblems. The two large tribes unified and chose the dragon as their symbol. In fact, the Han Chinese still call themselves the descendants of the Dragon.
In Chinese astrology the dragon was seen as a powerful almighty king because it was made up of different parts of animals such as a tiger, fish, snake and an eagle. The Chinese dragon was not seen as a threatening evil being as we do in the west – rather a symbol of power, superiority and rule.
Other Dragon years in history were: 1928 * 1940 * 1952 * 1964 * 1976 * 1988 * 2000. You may know some dragons in your families! And some of those children currently in Years 7 and 8 will have been born in the last Dragon year.