Zodiac, Chinese Astrology, and Days of the Week

Signs of the Zodiac — http://www.astrology-online.com/persn.htm

Chinese Astrology— http://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/chinese-zodiac/

What does it mean to be born on Saturday? Here's a traditional English nursery rhyme that predicts your life based on the day of the week you were born:

• Monday's child is fair of face [pretty or handsome]
• Tuesday's child is full of grace [moves well; may be a good dancer]
• Wednesday's child is full of woe [sad; many troubles]
• Thursday's child has far to go [will travel; has many plans and projects]
• Friday's child is loving and giving
• Saturday's child works hard for its living
• But the child that is born on the Sabbath day [Sunday]
• Is bonny [pretty] and blithe [happy], and good and gay [very happy; no worries]

Note! The word gay used to be different from what it means today. When this poem was written, it meant happy and cheerful.

Material World

Here is the link to the Web site for Material World that we looked at in class today:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/worldbalance/material.html

If you have time, you can see more photos from Kenya, Japan, India, and China at this site: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/worldbalance/producer.html

Haiku

The horse is running
high and beautiful colors
animal lovely

From our big window
I can see the clear blue sky
And beautiful birds.

On the big table

Five beautiful red roses
Stood in the green vase.

Elephant running
In Africa long after
bigger and mighty

Poinsettia red green
beautiful colors happy
anniversary

robin sings pretty
beautiful colors orange brown
flies in the forest

Commercials -- The Movie!

Here's the video of our class commercials. Great work, everybody!

You can do it! We can help!

After talking about slogans used in commercials, our class informally adopted this slogan from Home Depot. It has become the class motto, not only in what we say, but in what we do. You can do it; we can help! How do I feel about that? I'm lovin' it!

Interesting reading research

Here's a reading experiment. Try to read these mixed-up words. Hint: focus on the first and last letters.

I cna't blveiee taht I can uesdnatnrd waht tihs syas. New rsaerech syas taht the oerdr of ltetres in a wrod deos not mtaetr. The olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig!

How did you do? Here's the same paragraph with the words spelled correctly:

I can't believe that I can understand what this says. New research says that the order of letters in a word does not matter. The only important thing is that the first and last letter be in the right place. This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself, but the word as a whole. Amazing!

Try it in Spanish:

Sgeun un etsduio de una uivenrsdiad ignlsea, no ipmotra el odren en el que las ltears etsan ersciats, la uicna csoa ipormtnate es que la pmrirea y la utlima ltera esten ecsritas en la psiocion cocrrtea. El rsteo peuden estar ttaolmntee mal y aun pordas lerelo sin pobrleams. Etso es pquore no lemeos cada ltera por si msima preo la paalbra es un tdoo.

For more information about this research, go to http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/