Improve Your Communication Skills
The World’s Longest Loom Band
What is the longest loom band that you’ve been able to make? Perhaps you managed to make one long enough to skip with, but have you ever wondered about the world’s longest loom band?
How To Look At Art
Have you got a favourite painting? Mine is ‘A Portrait of the Countess Golovine’ painted by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, sometime around 1797. It is, unsurprisingly, a portrait of Countess Varvara Nikolaevna Golovine, a talented musician and artist from Russia. Elisabeth and the Countess became great friends and I love the way the Countess is smiling in the portrait, with a red shawl draped around her shoulders and her dark curly hair swept up in behind a scarf. The painting belongs to the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, which is one of my favourite galleries.
I love going to art galleries and looking at paintings, but at first I found it quite a daunting thing to do. Have you ever been to an art gallery and not known where to start? Or heard art critics talking about symbolism, composition and form but not understood? Sometimes looking at art can sound difficult, and talking about it can be a whole other language!
But looking at art doesn’t have to be complicated. Things like symbolism, where objects in paintings are used to represent something that’s happening, like a skull symbolising death, can be important and the composition, or the way things in the painting are arranged, can tell us a lot about the artist and why the painted what they did.
Cellular Communications
When we talk about ‘cellular communcations’, we are not referring to use of a cell phone, because before mobiles or cell phones there was a time when this only meant cell to cell interaction within an organ or tissue. This important cellular behaviour drives diverse functions from contracting cells in your heart muscle to the cells in your nerves.
3 Tips to Make your New Year’s Resolution Stick!
So the new year has begun and you’ve made a New Year’s resolution. How can you make sure it doesn’t go out the window by February? Perhaps these tips for sticking to your resolution will help…
New Year’s Resolution Tip #1: Be specific
Lots of people give up on their resolutions because they choose ones that are too big, vague and overwhelming. Whether your resolution is to do more sport, be a better friend, take up photography or anything else, you have a better chance of making it happen if you narrow it down.
For example, if your resolution is to be a better friend, make it your mission to remember your friends’ birthdays and to write a card for them, or to ask them often about what’s going on their lives. If you want to get more involved in sport, find out what sports your school or community offers and decide on a class to take or a team to sign up for. That way you have somewhere specific to start!
A Controlling Friendship – A Bully By Another Name
