Gingerbread Houses

December 12, 2023

Gingerbread has been delighting taste buds worldwide for centuries. Gingerbread likely came from the middle East or Asia, where people have been making it for over a thousand years. Legend has it that gingerbread arrived in Europe in the tenth century where a monk named Gregory Makar brought the recipe from Armenia to France.

As the treat became more popular throughout Europe, gingerbread shaping became an art form. People would carve a picture into a piece of wood and press dough into the mold, and their cookies would look like the picture.

After the Brothers Grimm wrote the story of Hansel and Gretal, Germans began to make gingerbread houses just like the one in the story. Later, when Germans immigrated to America, they brought this tradition along with them for many Americans as well.

Every winter, in the city of Bergen Norway, children ages eleven and under are invited to build an entire city of gingerbread. This magical display is called Pepperkakebyen, which means gingerbread town.

Candy architects can also participate in the National Gingerbread House Competition in Asheville, North Carolina. Contestants have gone way beyond houses, too, building castles, barns and birdhouses!

Vocabulary

architect – a person who designs buildings and directs their construction

• Doug worked with an architect to create his dream home.

connoisseur – a person who really understands and appreciates something, especially an art.

• The mushrooms had the chewy, savory flavor preferred by connoisseurs.

concoction – a mixture of different things someone has put together in a new way. 

• A smoothie is a concoction of fruits, berries, and yogurt.

immigrate – to move to a country from another country

• He immigrated with his parents in 1895  and grew up on Long Island.

novelty – the quality of being new and unusual

• Flexible schedules, once a novelty, are now more common.

Simone Biles

November 14, 2023

Simone Biles is widely considered the greatest gymnast of all time. She is the first female to win three straight All-Around World Championships, earning a total of 14 medals, 10 of them gold.

Life was not always easy for Simone. Her birth mother was unable to care for her children. Simone’s grandparents, Ron and Nellie Biles, adopted Simone and her younger sister, Adria.

On a field trip with her daycare class, six-year-old Simone was introduced to her sport at Bannon’s Gymnastix. Very quickly, she started copying the gymnasts, drawing the attention of the instructors.

“I loved the idea of flipping around, and the center saw something in me, so they sent home a letter to my parents encouraging me to join,” Simone explains. “Right from the start, I was fearless and willing to try anything and everything.”

Simone advanced very quickly. At age seven, she began performing competitively. Her debut as an international gymnast was on March 2013 at a World Cup event.

Simone is known for her power and upbeat personality. She often plays to the crowd, flashing a big smile as she performs in the floor exercise. Her coach, Aimee Boorman, appreciates her hard work and personality. “Simone is bubbly. She loves to laugh, is genuine and real. When she wins and is given flowers on the medal podium, she searches out the shyest child in the crowd and gives her the flowers.”

How does Simone handle the pressures of life as an athlete? “It is important to embrace the moment,” she says. “Remember to have as much fun as you can, but keep in mind, win or lose, you still have your whole life ahead. You can achieve anything that you put your mind to.”

Vocabulary

• execute – to do or perform something planned
• pirouette – a fast turn of the body on the toes or front part of the foot
• vault – to jump over something by first putting your hands on it or using a pole
• debut – to appear or perform in public for the first time
• genuine – being what something or someone appears to be; real
• excel – to be highly skilled, and be better than most others

Making Artificial Limbs

November 7, 2023

A pirate’s wooden leg may be one of the most famous examples of an artificial limb. These are devices that replace a body part. But did you know that there are records of replacement limbs as far back as 200 BCE? In Ancient Rome a famous general named Marcus Sergius was said to have a hand made of iron. Unfortunately for the general, his hand couldn’t do much. He wore it as decoration.

In the American Civil War, many soldiers lost limbs from fighting. Scientists and engineers began to design replacement arms and legs to do work. One design helped injured soldiers grasp things with moveable fingers. It was one of the first examples of a controllable artificial limb!

There are many reasons someone might need an artificial limb today. Perhaps they were born without an arm or leg or they were injured and had to have their arm or leg removed in surgery. Scientists and engineers are concerned with making them comfortable for the person and making it act like the original limb as much as possible.

There are also many different types of artificial limbs today for many different purposes. They can be steel arms, legs molded to look like a person’s original legs, or even blades that runners use to compete in races!

The most advanced artificial limbs today work with a wearer’s body and brain to imitate how a normal limb works. This lets the person control the limb with their brain, just like they would with any other part of their body.

Thankfully, artificial limbs have improved a lot since the days of pirates and their wooden legs. We can all say “aye!” to that!

Vocabulary

• artificial – made by people, often as a copy of something natural
• grasp – the act of holding onto someone or something
• suction – the force that pulls an object or liquid inside something else
• diseased – suffering from a disease
• concerned – worried
• imitate – to behave in a similar way to something else

Halloween’s Scary Fairies – The History of Halloween

October 31, 2023

We don’t usually think of fairies as spooky Halloween creatures. However, people in ancient Irish villages hid from them!
Halloween began with the Celts, who lived in Ireland over two thousand years ago. The holiday Samhain marked the end-of-summer harvest feast and the Celts’ New Year. On this day, they believed that the ghosts of the dead walked the earth and that fairies and demons came out of hiding.

The fairies’ dancing and beautiful music were enchanting to humans, but they had ill tempers. If you offended them, they could spoil your crops, bring nasty weather, or kidnap you to fairyland!

Fairy icons created by Good Ware – Flaticon

In a Celtic village, you did all you could to protect yourself from unkind fairies and ghosts on Samhain Eve. You left sweets out to keep them fed. Your priests lit giant bonfires to drive them away. If you left your house, you disguised yourself in a scary mask so the real goblins would think you were them! People throughout Europe feared fairies, wore costumes, and carved candlelit turnips into eerie faces to keep spirits away.

As hundreds of years have passed, people added their traditions to Samhain. Missionaries turned the pagan holiday into a festival honouring the dead called All Saints’ Day or All Hallows Day. The night before this day became All Hallows Eve and then Halloween. This holiday did not become popular in America until the influx of Irish immigrants in the late nineteenth century.
Today, we spend Halloween having scary fun, not hiding from fairies. Even so, we still carve jack o’-lanterns and offer sweets, as people across the ocean did long ago.

Vocabulary

enchanting (adjective): very likable, charming; enjoyable

offend (verb): To anger or annoy someone

eerie (adjective): Strange in a frightening or mysterious way

pagan (adjective): Describes a religion that worships many gods

influx (noun): A large flowing in of people or things at the same time

Lost in a Corn Maze

October 24, 2023

A corn maze is a massive, walk-through puzzle carved into a cornfield. From above, its winding paths may form a picture — anything from Halloween monsters to fire-breathing dragons, flying saucers to pirate ships, or sports heroes to scary witches.

A farmer may enlist a designer to create these incredible images. The designer begins with a sketch, and the farmer plows the design into a cornfield. A Global Positioning System, or GPS, guides their cutting.

Although today’s corn mazes may get a boost from modern technology, people have been designing, building, and getting lost in mazes for thousands of years. For example, mazes first appeared in Greek mythology. Garden hedges in European castle gardens were to amuse the royal court. By the 19th century, mazes had become a popular form of entertainment.

In 1993, producer Don Frants and designer Adrian Flesher built the world’s first corn maze in Annville, Pennsylvania. Their dino-shaped creation sparked a corn maze craze. There are now approximately one thousand corn mazes across the United States, and they exist worldwide except in Antarctica.

Every adventurer has a different maze-solving strategy. Some people charge in, while others remember the location of a hill, a tall tree, or the sun. Another approach is to use the “right-hand rule. (Whenever you see a path going to the right, follow it.)” Sooner or later, you’ll find your way out eventually. 😉

Vocabulary

approximately (adverb): almost, almost exactly

craze (noun): An activity, object, or idea that is extremely popular, usually for a short time

enlist (verb): To ask for help or support from someone

indicate (verb): To show or point out

intuition: (noun): The power to know/understand something without thinking it through

navigate (verb): to find one’s way around or make one’s way through

proclaim (verb): to state for others to know; to announce

The Dust Bowl

October 17, 2023

The Dust Bowl was a time of harsh dust storms in the central United States during the 1930s. Black Sunday, one of the worst dust storms in American history, struck on April 14, 1935. However, it was not the only storm. For almost ten straight years, between 1930 and 1940, high winds and terrible dust storms destroyed most of the farms and towns in the Great Plains.

Several factors caused the Dust Bowl. In the 1920s, the central U.S. had more rain than usual, and agriculture boomed. However, farmers did not practice environmentally friendly farming techniques. First, to plant as much wheat as possible, they plowed over all of the natural prairie grasses that kept the topsoil in place. Second, they planted crops too often instead of giving the soil a break now and then. As long as the rain kept falling, neither of these mistakes caused problems.

But in 1930, the rain stopped coming. The soil became dry, loose, and unable to support crops. The drought would have been bad enough for farmers, but strong winds picked up across the Great Plains. These “black blizzards” could sometimes last one or two days straight.

Farming families realized they could not stay in the Great Plains. Their houses and belongings were always dirty; the dust blew into their lungs, making them sick. Also, their farms were unproductive. Thousands of families packed up and moved west to find work because they heard California had good agricultural jobs. However, the whole United States was suffering from an economic crisis, and California’s farms did not have room for many new workers.

The Dust Bowl did end eventually. The U.S. government realized that it had to encourage farmers to practice more responsible farming techniques. The Soil Conservation Service studied the land and established ways to preserve the earth for the future. By 1938, the amount of dust blowing around had reduced by 65%. In 1939, large amounts of rain came and ended the drought. This time, farmers had better ideas of how to care for the environment around them.

The Story Behind Your Dreams

October 10, 2023

Have you ever wondered what a dream meant or why you had it? Dreams can be exciting, or terrifying, and often, complicated and confusing. Today, scientists still aren’t sure why we have them, but numerous theories have emerged.

One idea is that we dream to “practice” responding to problems, also known as the “threat simulation theory.” This theory might explain why our dreams often involve stressful events such as forgetting your homework.

Another theory says that dreams play an important role in keeping people asleep. We know that sleep produces a number of benefits for people’s moods and long term health. Scientist Mark Solms theorizes that dreams might allow people to get the sleep they need.

More recent advancements suggest that dreams could serve to organize our thoughts and memories. Scientists in Germany proved this while studying the electrical signals in the brains of sleeping mice. As the mice slept, the scientists found bursts of electricity in two sections of the brain: the neocortex, which controls thoughts, and the hippocampus, which controls memory.

However, some scientists still think we dream for no reason at all. The “activation synthesis theory” says our dreams are random firings from memories, thoughts, and images within the brain. Supporters of this theory say that dreams do not provide advantages and have no hidden meanings; they just happen while we sleep!

Regardless of why we dream, scientists agree that dreams have many benefits. They could help people solve complex problems and have long been considered inspirational sources.