ARTS and CRAFTS

 

FEBRUARY CELEBRATIONS

 

 

The carnival is related in its origin with the harvests, the fertility of the land and the need for good weather for cultivation.

The first vestiges of carnival are found in Egyptian culture. The whole town put on masks and gathered around a bonfire; They danced and asked for good luck for the crops, although it is also believed to be a way to drive away evil spirits.

In Venice, this festival was very popular because it allowed costumed nobles to mingle with ordinary people.

In Spain, the carnival party was prohibited during the reign of Carlos I, his son Felipe II and continued until Felipe III. It was Felipe IV who allowed the carnivals to be celebrated again.

The carnival goes before Ash Wednesday. This year it falls on February 18, so Shrove Tuesday is February 17 and the party is held the weekend before. This year the carnival and Valentine's Day coincide.

 

Who was Valentine?

Saint Valentine was a Roman Catholic priest who was also a physician and lived in Italy during the 3rd century AD.

Saint Valentine became famous because he secretly celebrated marriages, since many couples were in love and could not legally marry in Rome because Emperor Claudius II prohibited it.

The Roman emperor wanted to recruit many men to form an army, and he thought that marriage would be an obstacle to their training as soldiers. For that reason he forbade them to marry.

Upon learning that Valentine was secretly celebrating weddings, he ordered his arrest and sentenced him to death.

During his capture, Valentine befriended his jailer, Asterious, who was so impressed with the priest's that he asked her to help his daughter Julia with her lessons. She was blind and needed someone to read her books for her to learn.

The Emperor Claudius also grew to love him, and even offered to forgive him if he renounced his Christian faith and agreed to worship the Roman gods.

Valentine not only refused to give up his faith, but also invited the emperor to trust Christ. This infuriated the president so much that he sentenced him to death.

Before the punishment was served, the saint wrote one last note to Julia, encouraging her to stay close to Jesus and also to thank him for being her friend. At the end of the note he signed: "From your Valentine." This was what inspired people to start writing love letters.

The priest was executed on the Via Flaminiana, where later Pope John Paul the First (523-526) requested that a temple be erected under his invocation and of which most of his relics are still preserved in the church of Santa Praxedes.

Prior to this event, in 496, Pope Gelasius designated February 14 as the official Valentine's Day.

February 14 is the Day of Love and Friendship. Some also call this date as Valentine's Day.

In the Catholic saints' calendar, 14 February is celebrated as St. Valentine's Day, which is why this saint is known as the saint of lovers

PEACE EVERY DAY

 

Peace Day, why is it celebrated on 30 January?

Since 1965, every 30 January has been the date chosen to commemorate the death of Mahatma Gandhi, India's pacifist and spiritual leader who defended non-violence and resistance to the injustice to which his people were subjected. In 1948, he was shot dead by a Hindu fundamentalist.

The idea came from the Spanish professor Llorenç Vidal, who wanted to promote education in and for tolerance on a day like today under the slogan "Universal Love, Non-Violence and Peace". This Saturday, 57 years later, schools and educational centres are once again becoming instruments of peace and understanding between people regardless of their race, education, culture or religion.

• What can we do for Peace?

Educate for peace.

Respect life.

Reject violence.

Share with others.

Listen to understand.

Preserve the planet.

Rediscover solidarity.

Light a Candle for Peace

Light a Candle for Love

Light a Candle that shines all away around the World

Light a Candle for me

Light a Candle for you

That our wish for world peace will one day  come true

Sing Peace around the world

Peace is a journey of a thousand miles, you must go step by step

NEW LITTLE STORIES

 

THE PRINCES OF THE YEAR

    It happened, many centuries ago, that a powerful king thought of appointing three princes to travel continuously throughout his kingdom. The king called them: Summer, Autumn, Winter.

    The king sent the prince Summer to his people, but within a few days of his arrival, the springs dried up and thirst and heat threatened to devour the lives of all the inhabitants of the kingdom.

    The king then sent Prince Autumn, who arrived accompanied by many fruits as a gift. But within a few days the trees lost their leaves, the sky was covered with grey clouds laden with water, and the wind whipped through the fields and villages.

    The cold, majestic Prince Winter arrived later, accompanied by hundreds of vassals holding his heavy ermine cloak. The cold heart of the prince froze everything around him.

    Seeing the sadness of his people, the king had compassion on him and decided to seek a solution.

    In golden and dreamy regions, lived a princess called Primavera. The monarch sent for her, and as soon as the princess entered the king's domain, the earth was covered with flowers, the birds sang happily building their nests and the trees dressed their branches in green. A soft, clean sun shone in the sky, and at night the stars shone with extraordinary brilliance.

    The king then left the country in the hands of the four princes, and they travelled through the kingdom always in this order: Spring-Summer-Autumn-Winter.

• Answer these questions about the story :

What did he call the three princes?

What happened to Summer?

What happened to Autumn?

What happened to Winter?

Who managed to fix everything?

FLYING STARS

- Mommy, Mommy, run, come to the window! -shouted Maria.

- What's the matter?

- Look, there are little flying stars in the garden!

- How beautiful they are! -replied the mother. But they are not stars: they are fireflies. You can usually see them on summer nights.

- Are fireflies dangerous? Do they bite? -asked Maria.

- They're not dangerous at all," answered her mother.

Maria went down to the garden. After a while she went back upstairs screaming:

- Mummy, Mummy! I took a firefly and put it in this glass jar. I'm going to put it in my room and it will light me up all night.

- Oh, poor firefly! Do you really think it will give you light? Can't you see it's out of light?

- Because fireflies have light only in the dark," said Mary. Let's turn off the light and you'll see, Mama.

The mother turned off the light. But the firefly in the jar didn't give a single ray of light.

- Why doesn't it light up? -asked Mary.

- Because she is sad and feels like a prisoner. What would you do if you were locked up?

Mary understood that she had to let the firefly go. She went to the window and opened the jar. The firefly flew away leaving a trail of light.

•  Answer these questions about the story :

What was really flying in the garden? 

When do you usually see fireflies?

Where do you keep the firefly?

Why doesn't the firefly light up?

                      

Special Christmas 2020

 With the advent calendar, we took up an old German custom from the 19th century, which after becoming popular has become a creative and exciting countdown to Christmas for many families, especially when there are children. We begin by opening little windows on December 1st and end on Christmas Eve, December 24th.

Christmas is the date set aside for the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. 

Today, just as the Three Kings of the Orient brought gifts to Jesus, on the night of 24th December Father Christmas, and on the night of 5th and 6th January the Three Kings, bring gifts to every home to commemorate the birth of the Baby Jesus.

So don't forget to leave milk and biscuits for the Three Kings, or they will leave you some coal!

Once upon a time...

In one small town there was only one shop that sold Christmas trees. There you could find Christmas trees of all sizes, shapes and colours.

The owner of the shop had organised a competition to award the most beautiful and best decorated tree of the year and the best thing was that it was St. Nicholas himself who was going to give out the prize on Christmas Day. All the children in the city wanted to be awarded by Santa and they went to the shop to buy their tree to decorate it and be able to compete.

For their part, the little trees were very excited when they saw the children and decided to be the chosen one, shouting: "Look at me!

To me, I am big!... No, not me who is fat!... or me who is made of chocolate!... or me who can talk! You could hear it all over the shop. As the days went by, the shop was running out of trees and all you could hear was the voice of a little tree saying: To me, to me... I am the smallest one.

Almost on Christmas Eve, a very elegant couple arrived at the shop to buy a tree.

The shop owner informed them that the only Christmas tree he had left was a very small one. Regardless of the size, the couple decided to take it with them.

The small tree was very happy because finally someone could decorate it for Christmas and could participate in the competition.

When they arrived at the house where the couple lived, the tree was surprised: How could I, being so small, look so beautiful and majestic?

Once the couple entered the house, they began to call the daughter: Mary! Come... Daughter!... we have a surprise for you. The little tree heard some rapid footsteps coming from upstairs.

Her little heart began to beat strongly. He was happy to be able to make a beautiful little girl happy.

As the little tree came down, he was impressed by the girl's reaction: - This is my tree! I wanted a big, leafy, huge tree up to the sky to decorate it with thousands of lights and spheres. How am I going to win the competition with this little dwarf tree? said the girl, crying.

- Mary, it was the only tree left in the shop, her father explained.

- I don't want it!...it's horrible... I don't want it!, shouted the girl furiously.

The parents, disappointed, took the little tree and brought it back to the shop. 

The tree was sad because the girl did not want it but she hoped that someone would come and decorate it in time for Christmas. A few hours later, it was heard that they opened the door of the shop.

To me... to me... who is the smallest. The little tree shouted full of happiness. It was a sturdy couple, with big red cheeks and huge hands. The man in the shop informed them that the only tree he had left was the little one in the window. The couple took the tree and, without paying attention to its size, left with it.

When they got home, the tree saw two children coming out to meet it and shouting: "Did you find it, Daddy? Is that how we asked you, Mummy? When the parents got out of the car, the children went over to the little tree.

And what happened next? .........

                                              

SANTA RACE !

PUPIL'S  SANCEDO P1D

SNOWMAN RACE !

PUPIL'S SANCEDO    P6D

DOG  RACE!

PUPIL'S  CABAÑAS       P6C

ELF   RACE !

PUPIL'S   CORTIGUERA    P6B

PUPIL'S   CORTIGUERA     P2B

Some tasks performed by students

 ISAAC NEWTON

Isaac Newton is one of the most extraordinary minds in history. He is considered the representative of modern science, for his important contributions to physics and mathematics. He was much more than a scientist.

He did not know his father and his mother did not want to raise him. He barely felt loved.

He received a rather strict education, especially in religion.

His adolescence was spent far from his family, but still the years were quiet.

He met Catherine, with whom he had a great friendship.

He created many toys (wood, light, water, wind).

At the age of 16, he finished his studies at King's School.

He studied at the University of Cambridge.

He chose physics. He explained the Law of Gravity, which changed many concepts of science.  In 1669 he invented the reflecting telescope.

He even made some complicated calculations to discover when the end of the world would be.  He concluded that it would be in 2060.

This great sage died in 1727.

Inés Morán Aller --- sixth grade

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Albert was born in Germany on March 14, 1879, in a small town called Ulm. Throughout his life he had three different nationalities: German, then Swiss and the United States, where he died in April 1955.

As unlikely as it may seem, Einstein was considered by his teachers to be a bad student, a bit irresponsible, lazy and rather clumsy with mathematics. He enjoyed the violin, however, a passion that was instilled in him by his mother and which accompanied him throughout his life.

Curious, isn't it? Especially when we know him as one of the most brilliant minds in the fields of arithmetic, mathematics, physics... and we know that his contributions came to revolutionize all these areas, even giving rise to new branches of study.

At Einstein College he was very interested in mathematics and physics, but the other subjects were boring and simple.

Einstein's first wife had been a fellow student.

she accompanied him in the development of his first theories, which were published in 1905 

Five articles where Einstein expressed and exposed his interpretation of phenomena such as relativity. Thanks to the magnificent development of these ideas, Einstein obtained the degree of Doctor and the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.

Some of his most interesting theories are

Brownian Movement

Theory of Special Relativity

Mass Energy Equivalence. E = mc²

Theory of General Relativity.

You see that even for a genius like Einstein studying required effort.

Hugo  Guerra Pérez   Sixth Grade

THOMAS  EDISON

This American inventor was born in Milan (Ohio) on 11 February 1847. His childhood was not easy because his family was poor. Furthermore, as a child, he became partially deaf as a result of scarlet fever. This handicap conditioned his way of seeing the world and his relationships with children of his age. Since he was a child he liked to carry out experiments.

. Although he was smart, he was bored in class and his grades were low. At the age of seven he was expelled from school because his teacher considered him to be a retard.

His mother, who was a school teacher, decided to take over his training. She was able to convey to him things that were very difficult to teach: curiosity about things and phenomena, perseverance in work and a desire to read. It was precisely the reading of a book provided by his mother that created in Thomas a great fascination for experimentation. And since he was ten years old, he had been conducting experiments in a pantry at home. At the age of twelve, he sold newspapers and knick-knacks on the train to pay for his laboratory experiments.

After saving a child from dying on the train tracks, the child's grateful father taught him telegraphy. He liked what he didn't know so much that he built a domestic telegraph. He was a tireless reader; it is said that he tried to read a whole library. He reproduced the experiments he had read. All his circumstances and calamities in his childhood force us to think of this character not only as an inventor but as a person.

In 1868, Thomas Edison patented his first invention. It was a device for counting votes in elections. But it was not very successful.

He improved Graham Bell's telephone by adding a carbon microphone.

In 1877, he made one of his most important contributions: the phonograph.

Perhaps his most famous discovery was the light bulb.

Behind all these discoveries there were many hours of work and not always successful. Thomas Edison had a natural optimism and great perseverance.

And on another occasion, he said: "An experience is never a failure, because it always comes to prove something".

Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla, was a Croatian engineer born in Smija, in the Austrian Empire in July 1856. He was an inventor in the field of electromagnetism. His studies and researches today have been the basis of systems for the use of alternating electric current.

Son of Serbian parents. His father Milutin Tesla was a priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church and his mother Duka Mandic was a housewife who invented small domestic appliances, although she was illiterate.

In 1862, the family moved to Gospic, where Nikola attended  a secondary school like the lycée in France, and studied for three years when the normal was four, but Tesla's genius helped him complete the curriculum in less time.

He was convinced by his father to return to university and entered Charles University in Prague, where he met Ernst Macht, an Austrian physicist and philosopher in the field of optics and acoustics.

However, when his father died, he dropped out of the course.

Nikola Tesla moved to Paris in 1882, and there he began working at the Continental Edison Company as an engineer, designing electrical equipment. That year, he invented the induction motor, which is an alternating current electric motor.

In 1884 he arrived in the United States to work with Thomas Edison himself, who hired him to work at the Edison Machine Works. Tesla excelled at repairing the damaged dynamos of the Oregon liner, which earned him Edison's congratulations and further consideration.

He redesigned the Edison company's DC generators, for which he was offered $50,000. In 1886, Tesla opened his own company: Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing, without much success since its investors did not approve the project of an alternating current motor.

But he continued with his project. Later George Westinghouse bought Tesla's patent for his alternating current motor. With this money he became more independent and opened a workshop in Manhattan with hired personnel.

Nikola's inventions are many: the Tesla coil, wireless lighting, the steam oscillator generator, among others.

This ingenious electrician died in New York in 1943.

THE MINIBEAST

 

Some invertebrates live in fresh water in places like rivers or lakes.

 Clam                             Dragonfly                        Crab

Other invertebrates live in salt water   in the sea or the oceans.

Jellyfish                         Starfish             Octopus

Most invertebrates live on land. They are called Terrestrial Invertebrates

Bee       Beetle      Grasshopper       Snail    Earthworm       Ants    Slug     Ladybird

_________________________________________________________

Wasps, bees, ants and many other insects live in large organised groups or colonies. For this reason, they are called social insects. Among the members of a colony, there is a division of labour. The body of the insect is adapted to the functions.

In a honeybee colony, there is the only one queen bee. She is the only fertile female. Drones are male bees. Their main function is to fertilize the queen in the spring.

Worker bees are sterile females. 

They perform many tasks;  for example, nurse bees care for the larvae.

Nectar foragers  transform the nectar into honey.

Pollen foragers collect and carry  food to the larvae.