Did you know there is special day just for reading Star Wars books!?
Star Wars Reads is a chance for you to bury your nose in books about Jedi’s, Rebels, Sith Lords, good vs evil, the dark side and space battles.
There are some really cool activity sheets you can do, including some from the new movie The Force Awakens.
Have a hunt in your local library for Star Wars books, there are heaps of them!
Yes, even Storm Troopers read – so you should too! May the Force be with you, young padawans!
Christmas books, films and other things can be awfully serious. And there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, I’d say it’s downright necessary. But Christmas is also a silly season, so I’ve made a short list of silly books and films that will make you want to dress up as an weird-looking elf and dance around the living room.
1.’Invasion of the Christmas Puddings’ by Jeremy Strong. Have a read of what’s in store: “’Tis the season to be jolly tra-la-la-la-la … BUT WAIT!
Father Christmas’s EVIL brother, Bad Christmas, is plotting to take over the world.
His poisonous Christmas puddings that turn humans into zombies are pouring through from The Other Side in their millions. Millions of Christmas puddings, all made of deadly sticky matter!
But four children from Plumpot Primary have escaped the puddings. Are they in time to stop Bad Christmas and save the world?
Prepare to be … puddified!” Goodreads.
2. Of course it wouldn’t be Christmas if you hadn’t watched ‘The Muppet Christmas Carol’ at least ten times in which the Muppets tell their version of Charles Dickins’s ‘A Christmas Carol’. One of my favourite moments is when Gonzo sets Rizzo on fire and Rizzo runs around shouting, “Light the lamp, not the rat, light the lamp, not the rat! Put me out, put me out, put me out!” imdb
3. Now I’ll turn your attention to ‘The Smallest Gift of Christmas’ by Peter H. Reynolds. This is one of new favourite Christmas tales. “Roland can’t wait for Christmas Day, and when the morning finally arrives he races downstairs to see what is waiting for him. What he sees stops him in his tracks. Could that tiny present really be what he had waited all year for? It has to be the smallest gift he had ever seen! So Roland wishes for something bigger . . . and bigger . . . and bigger. But he’s still convinced there must be a bigger gift somewhere in the universe. Will he know it when he sees it? Peter H. Reynolds’s spare, free-spirited illustrations and heartwarming text make this be-carefulwhat-you-wish-for story the perfect holiday gift.”
4.And finally please, oh please, watch with your family the ‘Robbie the Reindeer Trilogy’. It’s a hugely fun film series. “Robbie, an out-of-condition reindeer, tries to earn a place on Santa’s crack sleigh team.” imdb.
Wishing you all a silly season with lots of laughter, good books and family films!
Today is the 10th anniversary of Guinness World Records day – one of our most popular library books!
Around the world people will be trying to break and create records to celebrate the day. For a special event the world’s tallest and shortest men met and shook hands in London. The tallest man is Sultan Kosen from Turkey (who’s 2.51m tall), and the shortest is Chandra Bahadur Dangi from Nepal (at just 55cm tall). There’s a difference of almost 2m between them – wow!
Did you know that the Guinness World Records was created by the Guinness beer company to help drinkers solve disputes and arguments over facts? The first book of records was published in 1955 and has been going ever since.
You can search our catalogue for the latest Guinness World Records and have fun examining all the amazing records that people have created (you can borrow the 2013 edition as an ebook).
Above us the International Space Station (ISS), with 6 crew on board, obits the earth every 90 minutes. Recently they fitted a camera to the space station so you can watch live what’s going on. It’s really addictive to watch… we warned you!
When the crew are on duty the camera shows what’s going on inside the space station and you can listen to the audio of conversations between the crew and mission control. When the crew are off duty, the camera is pointing towards earth showing the view the crew have from their windows. Often the ISS goes into a black spot where there’s no transmission and it’s out of contact with Earth. So, if the screen shows nothing, just wait a bit and the video feed will return when the ISS is out of the black spot.
Because the ISS orbits Earth once every 90 minutes the crew experience a sunrise and sunset every 45 minutes – they have 45 minutes of night time and 45minutes of daytime. So if the screen looks dark it may be because it’s night time on the ISS. Look closely and you may see the lights of cities on Earth below.
Have fun watching! Here’s the link to the feed
Near Nelson a bunch of cavers have been busy – they’ve discovered the deepest cave in New Zealand and in the Southern Hemisphere.
The passage is about 10kms long and drops around 1200m down below the earth’s surface. Th discovery was made when a link between two previously known cave systems, called Stormy Pot and Nettlebed, was found. There was a problem however – the link had previously been used as a toilet for cavers exploring the area – yuk! The link was full of rubble, which took the cavers 2 days to remove.
They plan to return to the cave systems soon and explore the area completely. More information here.
New Zealand is full of caves, there are many places underground to explore. Find out more about caving in these books:
Forget ‘she sells sea shells on the sea shore’, a new tongue twister has been named as the worlds toughest.
Here it is (try to say is 10 times without making a mistake):
‘pad kid poured curd pulled cold’
A tongue-twister is a phrase that is purposefully designed to be difficult to say properly. Did you know that there is a sign-language equivalent of a tongue-twister? It’s called a finger-fumbler and is a series of signs that are difficult for hands to manage in sequence. The phrase ‘good blood, bad blood’ is an example of a finger-fumbler and a tongue twister.
This new tough tongue twister was designed as a research experiment by psychologists who were trying to find out about the brain’s speech-planning process. Most participants in the study couldn’t say it 10 times, some even clammed up and stopped speaking altogether, and others just lost control of their mouths.
Looking for some more phrases to twist your tongue around? Try these:
A volcanic eruption has created a new island in the sea South of Tokoyo, Japan.
The island hasn’t been named yet (the Japanese Government is waiting to see if it sticks around or sinks back into the sea), but it’s 200m wide and is just off the coast of Nishinoshima, a small, uninhabited island in the Ogasawara chain, which is also known as the Bonin Islands.
The Japanese Coast Guard managed to grab some incredible footage of the island:
Volcanoes are cool, and we have heaps of them in and around NZ, so it pays to know a bit about them…
Check out this amazing children’s library in Mexico
There are more photos over on the website Inhabitots. The designers have cleverly used the bookshelves to form the ground of the library, and to create a fun place to learn, play and read in.
What do you think? Would you like to visit a library like this?
Hate getting out of bed and just want to stay under the duvet? Then NASA could have the perfect job for you!
The American space agency- NASA- has put out an ad looking for people to stay in bed continuously for 10 weeks. You’ll have to do everything while staying in bed – reading, watching TV, eating, washing and even going to the toilet! They’ll even pay you to do it!
The space scientists’ aim was to study the effects of weightlessness on the human body, and the easiest way to do this was to get people to stay in bed for a long time. Volunteers will have to lie in bed with their feet raised slightly, and at the end of the 10 weeks the scientists will ask them to do a series of exercises to see how lying down for so long as affected them. The scientists reckon that lying down for so long will cause you to lose bone strength.
What do you think? Would you do it?
I bet you think it’s the toilet, right? Wrong!
A recent study done by UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) that aims to draw attention to sanitation around the world has revealed some shocking facts – about a third of people reckon the toilet is the dirtest place in their home, but it’s actually more likely to be the arms of your sofas and your gaming controllers. Ew!
But it’s not just the inside of the house that you have to be worried about. Things found in the garden are super dirty too! Trampolines, bikes and footballs were shown to have high levels of bacteria on them.
So now that you know, would you rather lick the toilet seat or your games controller…?