Art & History

What is the Big Deal About Finding Richard III?

As skeleton found under a car park in Leicester has been identified as that of King Richard III, who ruled England from 1483 to 1485. Richard has been pictured as a tyrant king. There’s a story that Richard killed his own nephews, the legendary ‘princes in the tower’ in order to usurp the throne.

Nearly a century after Richard’s death, Shakespeare describes Richard as a ‘bottled spider’, a hunchback. Since Shakespeare’s time writers and artists through history have imagined Richard as a terrifying figure, whose physical disabilities are signs of his cruel inner nature.

Some historians argue that Shakespeare must have been writing propaganda to please his queen, Elizabeth I, whose grandfather Henry VII defeated Richard in battle. These historians argue that Richard’s ‘hunchback’ is an insult made up by Shakespeare, but until now, we haven’t been able to know what the truth is.

Language & Literature

The Yorkshire Shepherdess – Interview with Amanda Owen

Amanda Owen is a tweeting shepherdess from Yorkshire, who has written a book about life on a hill farm in England. We caught up with her while she was baking pies and scones to find out what it is like to live on a farm, and how she and her family cope with living in such a remote location.

Home, Health & Style, Popular

8 Supermarket Tricks to Make Your Parents Spend More

You might have noticed that many supermarkets have a similar layout. This is no coincidence. Researchers have spent many years working out how to set out the store in order to get customers to spend more! See how many of these supermarket tricks you recognise, the next time you go shopping with your parents!

Huge Trolleys

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Shopping trollies are deliberately MUCH larger than needed for a weekly shop, which encourages customers to buy more. In fact, they’ve been getting bigger and bigger in the past few years.

The Bakery at the Entrance

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That smell of freshly baked bread? Not only does it make you want to buy a yummy loaf, it also makes you hungry. It is well known that if you go shopping when you are hungry, you buy more!

Tempting Fruit and Veg

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After the bakery, comes the fruit and veg section. This often strikes me as a bit daft – by the time I get around to tins and packets of pasta, my salad is squashed at the bottom of the trolley! The bright colours tempt customers, and lots of supermarkets present fruit and veg in baskets or crates, to make it seem like they’ve come straight from the farm! Once you’ve filled your trolley with healthy produce, you’ll feel better about the packets of biscuits and crisps that come later!

Essentials Around the Store

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Just popping in with your parents to quickly to pick up some eggs, or milk? You might notice that these essentials, and others like sugar, salt and flour, are spread around the store. The supermarket planners want you to walk around the store as much as possible, passing all those tempting special offers at the end of the aisles.

End of Aisle Offers

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The shelves at the end of the aisles are the ones that we pay most attention to, and so supermarkets stack their special offers there, to persuade you to buy them. These are often things like fizzy drinks, that you might not normally purchase.

Loyalty Cards

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Supermarkets don’t just give their customers loyalty cards to encourage them to come back to their stores. They also use the data (information) collected to target their advertising better. If your parents have a loyalty card, have a look at the next letter they receive to see if they are giving discounts on products that your family often buy. Have a think about what the supermarket would know about your family – if you have a pet, when you have birthdays (e.g. if you buy a cake in the store), what toys you like, which interests you have (e.g. your parents bought a magazine about traveling to Italy).

Sweets at the Checkout

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Ok, hands up if you’ve ever asked your parents for sweets when you were at the checkout! In Germany, they have a word for this – Quengelware. The word is made up of “quengeln” which means “to whine” and “Ware”, which means products. Products that make kids whine or grump at their parents, who are fed up with the hassle of shopping and give in to their kids’ demands! Some supermarkets now advertise that they have lanes without sweets, so that parents can avoid this argument.

Kids’ Products at Your Eye Level

Talking of kids in supermarkets, did you ever notice that products aimed at kids are displayed at your eye level? The cheese strings are placed at that height in the hope that you will ask for them!

How many of these supermarket tricks did you recognise? Next time you go shopping, take a good look at how the store is laid out and see if you can find some more.

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Popular, Science, Nature and Tech

Have you ever wondered…why leaves change colour in autumn?

Autumn is a season of change; the weather gets colder, there’s less daylight and leaves change colour and fall from plants. But why does this happen?

Why Do Plants Have Leaves?

Leaves contain a chemical called chlorophyll (pronounced KLO-ro-fil), which as well as giving them their lovely green colour also helps create food for the plant. The leaves act like tiny solar panels, and use the sun’s energy to convert water (from the ground) and a gas called carbon dioxide (from the air) into sugar and oxygen. This process is called photosynthesis (pronounced foto-SIN-theh-sis), and the sugar is what the plant lives on.

Events, Written By You

The Girlguide Girls’ Attitude Survey – Written By You

My name is Isla Whateley, I’m a 17-year-old Girlguiding member from Glasgow and a member of the charity’s youth panel Advocate. We discuss issues affecting girls and young women and look for ways to seek change.

Every year, Girlguiding publishes research into the opinions of girls and young women in the UK, called the Girls’ Attitude Survey. The findings from the latest report show that girls and young women are experiencing shocking levels of everyday sexism and discrimination at school, on the street and online.

For example, 75 per cent of girls aged 11-12 say sexism affects most areas of their life, 87 per cent think women are judged more for looks than ability and one in five 7-11 year-olds say they have been on a diet.