Science, Nature and Tech

Tales From The Farm – Help Name Rosie’s Lambs

Yesterday we heard the sad story of the lamb that did not survive. Rosie’s mum has been in touch to tell us how the other little lambs are doing.

As you can see from the pictures, they are all doing great. It was cold on the farm yesterday, as the family went about their duties, making sure the sheep and lambs were healthy and content.

 

Twin lambs

 

 

Rosie’s dad has been ploughing the fields, and getting ready to sew oats and barley. Do you know what they look like?

 

Oats

Barley

 

 

Can you see the difference between the two photos?

There is always work to be done on the Farm, and it is not a 9am to 5pm job. It is a way of life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rosie and her family are going to find out whether the lambs are male of female and have asked Jump! readers to help name them. The lambs are named in alphabetical order, so this year their names should start with a “D”.

What do you think? What names do you like?

Leave a comment to suggest a name and Rosie will pick the names she likes best.

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School & Career

What is The Point of Learning English?

learning english

Have you ever sat in a Maths class wondering why you will ever need to be able to do long division without a calculator? Or silently cursed your Geography teacher while learning about the formation of oxbow lakes? And History? That’s all in the past and irrelevant, isn’t it?
In this series of articles, we will look at some of the subjects we learn at school, and try and answer the question: What’s the point in learning this?

Last time we looked at uses of Maths, both in day-to-day life, and for your future career. Today we will focus on learning English. Once we have learned how to read, write and spell, what is the point? Will we ever need to quote Shakespearian sonnets? And who, other than writers, needs to be able to write stories and poems?

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Science, Nature and Tech

Awesome Science Resources for Kids

STEM resources
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

RI christmas lecture

 

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

 

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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 HistoryBiologyLiterature, 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

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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

 

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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

eie

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

The same site (of the Exploratorium in San Francisco) has a great list of ‘snacks’ – little experiments to try at home

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.

 

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Science, Nature and Tech

The leg bone’s connected to the….

Why didn’t the Skeleton go to the party? Cos he had nobody to dance with….
Get it?
Yes, ok… so not the most original joke, but the skeleton is truly an amazing structure. Much like the rest of the body.
So apart from making a great Halloween costume, what is a skeleton for? What do the various bits a pieces do?

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Home, Health & Style

Life in an English Village

life in an english village

When we think of a country, we often think of a stereotype – an oversimplified image or idea. These are some country stereotypes – can you guess which countries we are meaning here?

Stereotype 2

Stereotype 1

Sometimes a stereotype is used in a negative way, but often we use them because they are the only things we know about the country we are talking about. They are often based on a truth about the country and can be a part of life in that country.
An English Village is today’s topic. When you search for an image of ‘English Village’ you might find something like this

English Village

You might think that living in an English village is all thatched cottages, red telephone boxes, and Sunday afternoon cricket. That is certainly the stereotype!
If you live in a city, you might also think that living in a village like this would be boring, that there might not be much to do, but you would be surprised how busy life in a small community can be.
We asked our contributor Liz to tell us what it is really like to live in a small English village not far from the capital city, London.

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