Improve Your Communication Skills
The Adventures of Cha Cha the Dragon – Part 2
Following on from Iona’s wonderful story of Cha Cha the Dragon, here is Part 2
Once upon a time, in deepest China, there lived a man named Li-Wang. Li- Wang was getting on in years. His wife and son had both died in childbirth, and he had only his beautiful daughter to comfort him and to keep him company. It was widely said that the daughter of Li-Wang could be no mortal being, but was an angel, sent straight from the Gods as a token of their grace and kindness. However, Li-Wang, poor man rarely ever got to see his beautiful daughter, for Li-Wang was a builder, and his latest line of employment was on The Great Wall of China Teapots.
Do Carrots Help You See In The Dark?
In the first of a fab new series called #factORfable, we take a look at some stubborn myths and find out if they are true! First up – do carrots help you see in the dark?
Awesome Science Resources for Kids
Where else can you find great Science Resources for Kids? You can browse our archives here on Jump! Mag or you can check out the following sites.
We will update this list in the coming months, and will concentrate on resources you can access online – lectures, TV Shows, YouTube channels, online archives, websites and blogs with science tutorials so that you can roll up your sleeves and get stuck into science.
We will update this list regularly, so if you have something cool to add, let us know.
SPARXX
Sparxx is an initiative bought to you by the Women’s Engineering Society (WES).
Their aim is to bring you all the latest news, views, events, opportunities, careers, interesting stuff, fun stuff and freebies to help girls find inspiration for future careers. Sign up for their newsletter here.
The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
The CHRISTMAS LECTURES® are entertaining and informative science events for young people, broadcast on UK television every year. You can watch them online here. Prepare to be amazed
UPDATE
The Royal Institution have just launched Experimental, a series of YouTube videos with great and simple experiments for parents and children to try at home. Find their YouTube Channel here.
Zooniverse
Real science, online – The Zooniverse is home to the internet’s largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects. You can choose to help researchers characterize bat calls, or explore Mars, without leaving your house.
Crash Course
Six awesome courses in one awesome channel: John Green teaches you US History and Hank Green teaches you Chemistry. Check out the playlists for past courses in World History, Biology, Literature, and Ecology
Bill Nye the Science Guy
Bill Nye is a scientist, engineer, comedian, author and inventor. His mission is to make science fun, and help people understand the science that makes our world work. Here are the Home Demos, the experiments you should try at home sometime. Keep clicking around and you’ll find the Episode Guides.
EdHeads
Edheads is an online educational resource that provides free science and math games and activities that promote critical thinking. You can design a mobile (cell) phone, repair a weakened aorta or learn about simple machines, and much more.
Science Projects for Kids
This is a site that links to lots of other sites – we loved the Amusement Park Physics – design your own roller-coaster but be careful because if you get the science wrong… DISASTER!
Silvia’s Show
Silvia is a young girl from California, USA and she’s been making Super-Awesome webshows on making cool stuff since 2010. She demonstrates science experiments, and great craft projects. You’ll never be bored, when Silvia is around!
NASA
The kids pages on Nasa are awesome, and that is before we get to the videos of ELMO at NASA. Science and Sesame Street. It doesn’t get much better than this.
Veritaseum
Veritasium is a science video blog featuring experiments, expert interviews, cool demos, and discussions with the public about everything science – these are at times more advanced, but well worth a look.
SciShow
We love the short and snappy servings of science from the SciShow team.
Minute Physics
We just had to include this one, as the solar system explanation is so brilliant even our science dunce editor understood it!
Engineering is Elementary
Engineering is Elementary is a project of the National Center for Technological Literacy at the Museum of Science, Boston (MOS). They have fantastic resources for teachers and home-ed families, on a range of topics. Some of the content is free to use, and the teaching guides and stories can be purchased on the site.
Further resources
The National Science Teachers Association has a great list of books about science
National Geographic is a great website with a huge range of articles and fun stuff
Cool music and science from They May Be Giants and the Here Comes Science CD
Woodlands Resources Science for educational and fun activities
How Stuff Works – well, just that really
This is a bit of a niche Science subject, but really cool – Skateboarding Science
If you like computers and want to learn how to make your own programmes, BBC had this cool game toolkit so that you can make your own games and Code.org can teach you to code, as can Scratch
If your parents are on Twitter, get them to follow @realscientists – a rotational twitter account featuring real scientists, science writers, communicators and policy makers talking about their lives and their work. Tweeters from different fields of science and science-related fields.
How To Grow Your Own Geek is a podcast created to share a love of geeking and parenting, and to provide advice on how to combine the two. Check out their Science and History Podcasts for Kids
Coding Resources by DeVry Bootcamp has plenty of interesting resources for older or more advanced students.
Resources to Create Your Own Video Game
Recently our editor Lynn visited Dare To Be Digital, a games fair in Dundee to find out a bit about gaming, and how kids can get involved. This week we will feature tips from successful women in the games industry, and information about where to start looking at a career in games, starting today with a feature on how to create your own video game.
What’s in a name….?
Do you ever wonder why people can’t pronounce your name correctly? Or struggle to say a friend’s name right sometimes? Here Avani tells us about her experiences, and how we can make the effort to pronounce things as best we can!
Do people always get your name wrong?
My name is Avani and let me start by saying: I get it.
Sometimes I spend ages teaching someone how to say my name properly (Uvni would probably be the best way to write how it’s pronounced) and other times I really can’t be bothered. I wish I had an easier name, or that people would just work harder to get it right!
Why do we find some names really difficult to pronounce and others really easy?
Here in England, people have names which come from all over the world. These names might be from places where a different language is spoken, and the different languages may also use different letters or characters to those we use for English.
My family, for example, come from a part of India called Gujarat. The Gujarati language uses a syllabary (a set of sounds) rather than an alphabet, but the syllables don’t always match up with English letter. The ‘v’ in ‘Avani’ (વ in Gujarati script) should actually be pronounced somewhere in between the English ‘v’ and ‘w’ sounds, but there isn’t an English letter that sounds exactly the same and this makes my name harder for people to remember! Also the ‘a’ and ‘u’ sounds in Gujarati are written using variations of the same symbol (અ (u) and આ (a)), which is why my name is spelt with an ‘A’, but pronounced using a ‘U’. Here’s what ‘Avani’ looks like written in Gujarati: અવનો – cool, right?
Languages which do use the same letters as those in English, may not pronounce all of them in the same way. This means that names that look similar on paper may be pronounced differently depending on where in the world someone lives. In Spanish, for example, the ‘j’ and ‘x’ letters are more like (but not identical to!) the English ‘h’, and in German, the letter ‘j’ sounds more like the English ‘y’ – can you imagine all the different ways people around the world must pronounce ‘Jesus’? You can listen to a few here!
It’s not only names from other countries that are hard to pronounce though! Have you ever thought about which common English names might be tricky for someone learning the language to get their head around? What about the name ‘Thomas’? We say it with a hard ‘T’ (like the one in ‘tree’, rather than the one in ‘three’) even though it is spelt with a ‘Th’, and we say the name ‘Charlotte’ with a ‘Sh’ sound (like in shop) even though it is spelt with a ‘Ch’ (like in chop). It must be hard to keep up with which names follow the usual pronunciation rules (like Theo or Charles) and which ones don’t!
What can I do if I think I’m pronouncing someone’s name wrong?
It is always worth checking with someone if you think you’re saying their name wrong – even if you’ve known them for ages and are embarrassed about asking, chances are they’ll be really glad to have an opportunity to correct you! However, it’s also important to remember that even if you know that the way someone says their name is different to the traditional way of saying it, you should always say their name like they have asked you to. Many people living in England, for example, prefer to go by a nickname or a more ‘Anglicised’ (English-sounding) version of their name to make things a little easier – so if you know a ‘Jesminder’ who prefers ‘Jess’, or a ‘Paulo’ who prefers ‘Paul’, you should respect their decision!
If you’ve just met someone new and have forgotten how to pronounce their name (or even if you’ve met them a few
times) – don’t despair, they probably won’t mind if you ask them again! If you are too embarrassed, though, there is a huge variety of pronunciation websites out there which will be able to help you. Click here for a good one!
Do you have a hard-to-pronounce name? Or have you ever been in an embarrassing situation over getting someone’s name wrong? Do you live in another country – which English names do you really struggle with? I’d love to hear your stories!
As well as trying to get people to say her name right, Avani Shah is currently working on a book for 8-12 year olds. She also blogs about her childhood and teenage experiences (Away with the Mice) and writes about words, etymology, and spelling for a website called Spellzone.
Title Photograph: Daisy 2008
Nom & Malc 2008
RiPO 2012