Recicle!

Still life: Bent objects

TERRY BORDER was born in South California, 1965. He grew up in and around the Indianapolis area, and now resides a few miles south of there in Greenwood.

After working several years in commercial photography, Mr. Border started working in wire sculpture as a hobby. In a few months he was selling small mobiles in some local galleries. After getting a commission from a friend to make a large mobile, he started showing other medium to large mobiles in shows at Dean Johnson Gallery, The Safeco Indianapolis Art Show, and some solo shows at The Bungalow, and The Rocky Mills Art Gallery.

Mr. Borders' work is part of many private collections from Cleveland, Ohio, to Pensacola, Florida. He recently installed 12' x 14' mobile commissioned by and for and Ohio public school.

Mr. Border graduated in 1988 from Ball State University with a B.S. in fine art photography. 

THE INTROVERT

SYLVIA MUFFIN PUT HER HEAD IN THE OVEN

BANANAS IN THE BED (let's slip into bed together)

FRUIT WITH LIFE EXPERIENCE

A LITTLE CAT DOODLE

LITTLE POLISH GIRL

DANCING QUEENS

ENGLISH BREAKFAST

A great sport gesture!

In the cross of Navarre (town of Pamplona), ​​an event happened on Sunday December 2 to help us to continue believing in the values ​​of having a sporting attitude.

The Kenyan athlete, Abel Mutai, was very close to the finishing line, and believed that he had won the race. He started to greet the audience thinking that he was already the winner.

However, Iván Fernández Anaya realized that Abel was wrong and he, Iván, stopped ten meters before the banner. The Spanish runner would not take the opportunity to accelerate past Abel to win. Ivan laid on his back, and gestured to Abel, almost pushing him, to cross the finishing line.

Iván Fernández Anaya said at the end of the race: "Although someone had told me that I would have a place in the Spanish selection for the European athletics championships if I had won, I would not have changed what I did. I think that what I did was better than if I would have won. And this is very important, because nowadays in football, in society, in politics, people tend to act with very little sense of ethics, so a gesture of honesty means a lot".

Unfortunately, very few people have read this news. It's a shame. In my opinion, it would be nice to explain this to children, so they do not think that sport is only what they see on TV: violent kicks, aggresive statements, swearing, fingers in the eyes of the enemy ... 

The cash machine of happiness

The famous brand of soft drink, Coca-Cola, has created a striking campaign this Christmas, "The cash machine of Happiness", consisting of a cash machine that allows you to take 100 euros for free without a credit card.

The only requirement is that the user agrees to share that money. The machine offers options and suggestions for this purpose, such as giving away diapers, balloons, invitations to the cinema ... but it leaves the choice to you, simply giving you a red envelope with the cash.

In this campaign, the brand of soda takes as its starting point the creation of “a bad bank”. At the same time as the birth of the bad bank, "The cash machine of Happiness" was created. A webcam located on the front of the cash machine records those who come to get money.

The campaign is completed with a video of where some of these people decided to send the money.

This is a good topic to talk about in class: 

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IN THE SAME SITUATION?

Christmas

Santa Claus is coming to town

Children don't want to return to school because they want to play with all the games that they have received during these holidays. Therefore, I have been thinking about some activities for the first day at school. Every child will want to talk about all the presents that Santa Claus and “The Three Kings” have given to him/her so it is a good opportunity to work with the different skills in a fun way.

• Do you like Christmas? Why?Which is your favourite day of the Christmas' period?
• Do you celebrate New Year's Eve where you live? New Year's Eve means the last day of the year, 31^st December.
• What do you do on New Year's Eve?
• Do you have a special dinner or party?
• Do you make New Year's resolutions? Tell us your New Year's resolutions for 2013. I think students do not know the meaning of resolution so we are going to try to define it in English and give some example:

• When children behave well during the whole year, at Christmas, Santa Claus and “The Three kings” give them presents. Have you been a good boy/girl this year?

These questions are enough to do the activities. Children are put into small groups with the aim of every child having the chance to talk with the others. We want children to talk about the questions in English. Teacher should observe different groups and if he/she sees that children do not know how to express something, teacher will help them. This is a free activity, but the structures and vocabulary are limited. Therefore, teacher helps children to complete the exercise. Otherwise they can feel lost. With this activity:

• Students will work on questions and answers. They will work on listening and speaking.
• The communication is encouraged.
• Intonation, stress, facial expressions, etc. are worked. Both verbal and non-verbal communication are important in this kind of activities.
• Language is practised in a particular situation, in this case, Christmas.
• Pupils can say what they want and they can also choose the way to say it.
• This activity is connected with real life situations.
• Mistakes will not be corrected. We want pupils to understand each other.

If teacher observes that children are motivated by this activity, he/she can take the advantage of also working on reading and writing skills. After the dialogue, they can write the information about Christmas in their notebooks. They can do a summary with the main ideas and write their opinions about these holidays. 

Learn English Kids (BRISITH COUNCIL)

I have found this page where children who are studying a second language (in this case English) can improve their skills with songs, stories and activities. I have liked because at the same time, kids are going to have fun and learn English too.

The webpage is very complete because it has a space for parents and for children. Pupils can become a member, make their own cool character and enter competitions. Parents and teachers can become also a member to download learning resources, watch video tips and download articles from language learning experts. There is a forum where adults share ideas about learning English.

Let’s go to see the webpage and the contents!

Ø  Kids’ games: children have fun playing games and learning English at the same time. The webpage has lots of free online vocabulary games for primary school. They can learn new words, practise using them in sentences and play the spelling games too. They can choose among these games: fun games, learn words, find words, play with words and spell words.

Ø  Listen and watch: do children like listening to stories and songs in English? In this section we will find lots of animated songs, stories cartoons and videos. In the “kids talk” section, students can watch videos of children. They can also practise their speaking with the fun tongue twisters. They can choose among these activities: songs, short stories and kids news.

Ø  Read and write: children can practise their reading and writing in English. Answer the questions in the 'your turn' section to practise their reading and writing. Improve English vocabulary with the set of 'word of the week' videos. There are also a section called Worksheets where children can practise their reading and writing in English with hundreds of them.

Ø  Make: Have fun creating and making things in English! Children practise their English online as they create stories, comics, monsters and superheroes (make your own). Have fun with the large collection of downloadable craft worksheets too. Some of the craft downloads have videos to help kids. They can also watch videos from children all around the world from the video competition. They can vote for their favourite!

Ø  Speak and spell: Learn how to speak and spell English words with Sam and Pam, the super space spies. In this section children improve their English pronunciation through fun action songs, stories and games. They will discover tricky spelling rules and practise their English spelling in the tricky words section. They can also download the free spelling tests and have fun with the phonics games and stories based on the UK literacy programme, Letters and Sounds.

Ø  Grammar: Do you want that children practise their English grammar? Watch the grammar videos, play the grammar games, print the grammar worksheets, write in the grammar quiz section and then test yourself with the downloadable grammar tests. Don't forget children can always print the grammar reference cards to help them.

Time for another year (Song)

This is the title of a song where children can practice the months of the year and seasons. Firstly, there is a puzzle that pupils can do and they will work the spatial intelligence. Then, they will listen the song and they have the chance of downloading the lyrics to know how to write all the words that appear in the song. At the end, there are three questions about their favourite month of the year. They write on the page and then, it appears in a forum where other students have already answered. The forum is very interesting because children do the activity and they also write their names and nationality, so children will realise that there are a lot of children that are in the same situation as them: learning English. Furthermore, if the students have the curiosity, they can look in a map the countries that appear in the forum, so they will learn geography.

Haiku

There is a fountain, 

where all the birds are singing.

Fly high to the sky!