Author Archives: KW
Multiplication tables practice
Here’s another link to help you to develop the speed with times tables facts. Try it out to help you get quicker at the core multiplication and division facts.
Recycled plastic sea-life sculptures
Here is the link to the plastic sculptures we discussed the other day. Click on the image to the left to see a BBC Newsround clip featuring the work of recycled plastic sculptor Angela Pozzi. She works with a team in the USA to collect plastic waste from beaches and then use them to create amazing, enormous sculptures of sea creatures.
More can be found out about Angela Pozzi’s ‘Washed Ashore’ project by clicking on the shark below.
Last photo of Mars – Opportunity Rover
After a 15-year mission, NASA lost its Opportunity rover (known as ‘Oppy’) in February 2018. However, they have just released its amazing last photography created from a panorama of shots on Mars. You can look at the new view of Mars using the NASA links (previous post) or via BBC Newsround which allows you to see Perseverance Valley and the edge of Endurance Crater and shows the surface of Mars in great detail.
Finding out more about Mars and space technology… (Homework help)
If you want to find out more about Mars, follow this link to the NASA ‘Spaceplace’ (which has brief information on different planets) aimed at children. There are some images here to show you what Mars looks like. You can also click on links to other planets and get some great images of Earth from space. These images might be especially useful for anyone choosing the ‘view from a rocket’ homework option.
On another page there is also a lot of information about space technology and inventions to support space travel and communication which is very interesting. This part of the site also has games and activities to do with space.
If you want more challenge, there is a huge amount of information and some great images on the main NASA site. You can even zoom in on a kind of ‘Google maps’ for Mars! (Click on any of the images to follow the links.)
The Shrinking of the Aral Sea
Here is a link to a video NASA have posted which shows how the Aral Sea (once the fourth largest internal sea in the world) has become smaller since the 1960s when the two the course of the two rivers that fed it were diverted to support the USSR cotton industry. The impact on the region’s physical and human geography has been huge, affecting the landscape, settlements and employment as well as health and migration. Since the construction of a dam, the northern lake has recovered some of its size, but the southern lake has continued to shrink. The Aral Sea is now about 10% of its original size in the 1960s. Much of the area is now known as The Aralkum Desert.
We looked at these NASA satellite images together in sequence, but this short video links them together and also provides a brief summary of what has happened in the area which is a useful summary of what we discussed if you want to look again or share it with your family.