Language & Literature

Talking in Text

Text speak is very confusing for a lot of people, but it is one area in which children and teenagers are far more advanced than adults.  Mobile phones and the internet are recent inventions.
Imagine what it was like for your parents as children.  If your parents are 30 years old, the internet did not exist for them!  Mobile phones were only invented in 1973 but did not become common for 15 or 20 years.  The first ones cost thousands of pounds and were the size of house bricks!

 

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Science, Nature and Tech

So You Want to Be A Scientist

“To become a scientist you must first take an enquiring mind, blend it with some passion, sprinkle on some creativity. Mix it up a bit, and squirt it out in big, loud dollops for everyone to see”, is how our contributor Dr Lesley Beeton envisions creating scientists.

 

Science is not just for geeks and nerds. It’s not only for boys, or girls, who wear glasses. It’s for those of us with freckles and dimples and turned-up noses. Science is for animal lovers, tongue-rollers, bird-watchers, and teddy bear vets everywhere.

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Science, Nature and Tech

Who on Earth Invented Traffic Lights?!

Every day we use hundreds of inventions without even thinking about it. In this series, we’ll be celebrating some of the most overlooked inventions, finding out what inspired their inventors and maybe even a few unexpected tales along the way.  Contributor Sally Anne asks… “Who on Earth invented… Traffic Lights?!”

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Home, Health & Style

Tomboys and Girly Girls

The mother of eight year old Isabella wrote about buying toys without glitter, and searching for ‘girl’ clothes in colours other than pink, which got us thinking about the term ‘tomboy’.
What do you call a girl who isn’t a girly-girl? Some people would say, ‘a tomboy’, but does that imply that the girl isn’t a real girl, and do we need a label for this anyway?
Perhaps we should let toys be toys, as this campaign demands, and sell clothes without ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ labels. What do you think?

 

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