Chomp to chill
Summer is the time when there is a surfeit of fruits and vegetables. Try your hand at this crossword and also learn about the benefits of many of these.
Archives: Articles
Globescan – May 31, 2019
There’s so much happening around the world, and there are so many ways to stay updated. Here’s one way of doing so.
Get your fix of news from around the world with this interactive map. Click on the hotspots to find out what’s happening.
The strange world of sea cucumbers
Deep inside our oceans dwell fascinating creatures called sea cucumbers. There are over 1,000 known species of them, but there are believed to be many more. Find out more about these food-shaped marine animals.
Have you ever heard of sea cucumbers? These creatures, whose bodies resemble the shape of an actual cucumber, come in a rainbow of colours and varying sizes. Spines and warts cover their skin and rows of tube feet help them move. Sea cucumbers play an important role in our marine eco-system, but are now being threatened by over-fishing, as they are considered a delicacy in some parts of the world.
Take the quiz below to learn more about sea cucumbers.
Image 1) courtesy, Brocken Inaglory [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]; Image 2) NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, via AP; Image 3) Zoological Survey of India.
Our election in numbers
We’ve got some interesting facts from the recently concluded 17th Lok Sabha election, but it’s up to you to guess the numbers for each. See how many you can get right…
India is the world’s largest democracy. So, the democratic process it uses to choose its leader is a large-scale exercise that involves crores of voters, lakhs of officials, and thousands of parties and candidates.
The 2019 General Election that took place from April 11 until May 19 was the longest election in the country in terms of the number of days the polling was held for – 39 days! Around 90 crore people were eligible to vote in this election, which is close to the total population of Europe and Brazil combined!
That’s not all. Here are more mind-boggling numbers-based facts about this election, but we’ve left it up to you to guess them.
We’ve left out the numbers in each fact listed below. Click on the number you think is right in the corresponding image and see how many you get correct…
Illustrations: Freepik
Write craft -4
You may not be ready to take up a job yet but you should certainly know all forms of letter writing including a job application.
You might think this is too early for you to start applying for a job. You’re right. But look at it this way: What is the harm in thinking right now about the kind of job you are suited to?
Right now, we are looking at a job that you will create out of what you like doing best. So you can add a creative job description – something that you would like to do if you were living in an imaginary world.
So, this week’s writing task is two-fold:
A. Write an creative job description. If you look at the career/job opportunities pages of your newspaper, you will see advertisements for various jobs. When you see the job description, you get an idea of what kind of job it is and what kind of person is needed to do that job.
Most of these advertisements give:
B. Write a job application for the job you have created.
The writer is the author of Fun with Creative Writing, a series of workbooks from level 1 to 8, and has co-authored Anyone Can Write, a teachers’ resource book, both published by Foundation Books (Cambridge University Press)
Quick thinking
Add here, subtract there, how good are you with simple equations? Try this memory game to see how fast you can solve these problems.
Addition, subtraction and multiplication are just some of the many forms of equations in maths. Here is a memory game to challenge you. How quickly do you think you can solve these equations by matching them?
Ph(r)ase out!
With the help of the pictures take a guess at what these common phrases used in theatre lingo could be.
Did you know that many times theatre artists do not use common phrases and words to define their actions? They say things differently. While some were coined from superstitious beliefs, others came about because of literal actions, and yet others because of famous personalities or groups.
Let’s look at some of these phrases. Look at the images, read the clues, and guess the phrase.
Next time you are in a play, impress your company by using these phrases.
Dust the words
Are you up for a little adventure at the beach? Look closely and find the hidden words in the picture.
It’s sun, sand and surf time! Look closely and find eight hidden words connected to the theme in the picture. Click on the spot you think has a hidden word to see if you are right.
Good luck. Remember to scour the sand.
My Monthly Planner: June 2019
With summer vacations almost over and school just around the corner, get your own planner to sort through the days ahead of you. Learn about the green sea turtles along the way…
Know your heritage
Take a trip around the country and discover some of India’s World Heritage Sites with this interactive quiz.
Every year, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designates sites of cultural, historical and natural importance as World Heritage Sites.
Thus far, 37 sites from India are awarded the World Heritage Site status. How many of these do you know? From the pictures and the description given, identify the names of the following World Heritage Sites from India.