Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 555
Yin and Yang
Hello Everyone
Have you ever seen this symbol before?
lt represents yin and yang.
The black part is the feminine yin; the white is the masculine yang.
The idea of yin and yang comes from ancient Chinese philosophy (or way of thinking).
This philosophy is called Taoism.
Understanding this philosophy is supposed to help to create balance and harmony. This in turn gives people happiness and inner peace. That means it is good for your mental health.
The philosophy gives every thing and every action in the universe the label of yin or yang.
Yin is feminine characteristics and Yang is masculine.
lt is a way to understand how everything interacts with everything else.
Examples of this could be matter and emptiness, light and darkness, and giving and receiving.
Summer would not be a distinct season if winter did not exist too, for example.
Yin and yang are forces that oppose each other and also complement each other. But they are supposed to work in harmony in both cases. There does not have to be a contest to decide a victory of one over the other.
The laws of nature say that differences exist in the world. There does not have to be war between differences; they can peacefully coexist. We live in a world of duality – light and dark, hot and cold, ebb and flow.
Men and women both possess male and female characteristics.
They both sometimes take action (masculine trait) and sometimes remain passive (feminine trait).
Taking action is a yang state. Taking no action is a yin state.
Sometimes the first strategy works better and sometimes the second works better.
Men and women can both sometimes give (masculine trait) and sometimes receive (feminine trait) – in different situations at different times.
All things in the universe are attributed to having yin and yang characteristics together (like people) or yin or yang qualities only (like water and stone).
Yin is softness, darkness, emptiness, night, water and so on.
Yang is hardness, warmth, light, day, stone and so on.
Shade cannot exist without light.
A magnet cannot work without positive and negative forces,
Sunrise is yang and sunset is yin – the pattern is circular like the yin yang symbol. lt relates to the rhythm of life: day and night, changing seasons, the tides of the sea.
Change is also a part of the natural law.
Embracing inevitable changes rather than resisting them helps us to cope with life well.
lt is sometimes called ‘going with the flow’ (instead of fighting the currents).
There is a circle of life on Earth that includes growth and decay, birth and death.
The tree is from the seed, the seed is from the fruit, the fruit is from the tree, the tree is from the seed.
Bye bye everyone – don’t forget to subscribe to my blog!
Love and kisses
Salty Sam
www.christina-sinclair.com
Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week
Bob: l asked Dad why the world was round and he said he didn’t know.
Bill: Oh?
Bob: l asked him why the sky is blue, and the grass is green, and blood is red, and he said he didn’t know.
Bill: Oh?
Bob: l asked him if he minded me asking him all these questions.
Bill: What did he say?
Bob: He said, “No, not at all son, if you never ask questions, you never learn anything!”
Bill: Huh?
Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.
Links may be used to www.christina-sinclair.com
Picture Gallery
Objects and space
Chinese art
Yin and Yang appearing in a developing conker 
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
This week, Henry piped up that he wanted to go on an adventure.
We realized that Henry usually came on our adventures with us, and it was only fair that, just for a change, we should go on an adventure with him.
Henry has many interests; he likes: poetry, butterfly watching and stamp collecting, but most of all he likes learning about space. He knows a lot about our solar system, and also some of the stars further out into space.
Just lately, though, he has been especially interested in reading about U.F.Os, and also about accounts of people saying that they have encountered aliens.
Henry says that with all the planets in the universe it seems very likely that there are other planets besides ours that have intelligent life on them.
But do they know about us?
Many people say they have seen space ships in the sky, and lots of film has been taken. The craft might be round, or triangular, or pyramid-shaped, or tic-tac-shaped, or just seen as lights in the distance. Sometimes the objects or lights move so quickly that no human body could survive the forces that would be generated inside a vehicle like that; so the craft cannot be made by humans. Sometimes they disappear into thin air.
Henry said they might fly past Earth and use our planet as a fuel stop – a bit like an interplanetary petrol station. They might be using the Earth’s electro-magnetic energy to soup-up their spaceships.
People who say they have met aliens, say the aliens speak English, sometimes using telepathy – and I am not talking about the characters on Star Trek or Star Wars here.
How do they know English? Do they walk amongst us hidden or in disguise?
Henry has a theory.
He says that as television transmissions go out into space, aliens passing by in their space ships would be able to pick up lots of programmes that would tell them about life on Earth without actually landing here.
They could learn about language and culture, history and politics, beliefs and domestic life – like how to make mashed potato.
Henry likes mashed potato.
Henry is quite quiet sometimes, but he obviously thinks a lot.
Anyway, Henry said that when alien spaceships are spotted in the skies above us they are very often near to weapons sites and military bases.
The aliens probably want to know more about our weapons technology and what we are capable of.
But you wouldn’t be able to learn about the latest secret weapon technology on the television because it is all so hush-hush!
He does have a point.
So they come in for a closer look. Some people think that aliens already walk amongst us in disguise or live in remote communities underground.
Some people even think that the aliens will make meaningful contact with us quite soon – and also that it is alienist to call them aliens; so you should call them star people to be more polite. Henry has obviously done a lot of investigating into the subject.
So we took our torches and all trekked out one clear night as the skies were getting dark before bedtime, to climb a big hill behind Farmer Jenkin’s farm to see if we could spot any U.F.Os that might turn out to be alien spacecraft.
We got quite excited at one point when we saw a light in the sky at a distance – after all we had aliens on the brain!
But it turned out to be just a small aeroplane coming in to land at the Rocky Bay Aerodrome.
Henry said that maybe it was just as well, because alien spaceships often emitted a lot of radiation, and that was not good for humans.
So in the end we did not see any aliens – but it was a nice adventure anyway.
Do you know what the following words and phrases mean?
- Classified information
- Extra-terrestrial
- National security
- Roswell
- Memory metal
- A weather balloon
- Eyewitness testimony
- Ufologist
- Area 51
- Unexplained phenomena
- Reverse engineering
- Mount Shasta
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Quick Quiz
What do these words and phrases mean?
- a borrowed landscape
- an Eden
- contemporary
- lush
- arid
- a glade
- in the lee
- symbiotic
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE A LlTTLE HALLOWEEN PUMPKlN
This is a lovely, little Halloween pumpkin for you to knit. if you get to the shops and all the pumpkins have been sold, you will always have this one in the cupboard to use!
PUMPKIN (KNIT ONE)
Using 4mm and bright orange dk yarn cast on 21 stitches
Knit 18 rows of garter stitch
Don’t cast off
Cut your yarn off and thread the end through your stitches
Pull the stitches tight and then sew down the back of the pumpkin using over-sew stitching with right rides together
Crochet 5 chains into a length of dark green dk yarn
Push one of the ends of yarn through the stalk and use the two ends to secure the stalk into the top of the pumpkin
Turn the pumpkin the right way out
PUMPKIN BASE (KNIT ONE)
Using 4mm and bright orange dk yarn cast on 25 stitches
Cast off and cut your yarn leaving ends of about 20cm
Curl the knitting into a disc
With one end of yarn sew across the disc again and again in different directions using a yarn needle to create a solid base
Stuff the pumpkin and add a face
Insert the base and sew around it to secure in place
You can embroider the face on the knitting before you construct it, if you prefer
Please note that the material on this blog is for personal use and for use in classrooms only.
It is a copyright infringement and, therefore, illegal under international law to sell items made with these patterns.
Use of the toys and projects is at your own risk.
©Christina Sinclair Designs 2015
Answers to the News Desk Quiz
- Classified information – information that only some people can know about – not the public at large
- Extra-terrestrial – something not belonging to this planet (Earth)
- National security – governments trying to keep the citizens of their country safe
- Roswell – a place in the US where some people say an alien space ship crashed in 1947, but others say it was a hoax to deflect attention from secret military manoeuvres
- Memory metal – a substance that looks like metal but when you scrunch it up and then let it go it springs back into its original shape with no creases
- A weather balloon – a balloon that is let up into the upper atmosphere to collect data that can be used to forecast the weather – some of them can be extraordinarily large and can be reported as UFOs
- Eyewitness testimony – a person reports that they have seen something happen
- Ufologist – a person who studies UFO related phenomena
- Area 51 – a secret military base in the Nevada Desert in the US that nobody is allowed to visit – some people say the people there have knowledge of aliens but you get told off if you try and visit
- Unexplained phenomena – things that happen that cannot be explained with current knowledge (phenomenon = singular and phenomena = plural)
- Reverse engineering – when you analyse a machine and discover how it works by studying it – some people say that memory metal was originally alien technology
- Mount Shasta – legend has it that aliens live underground here and many people who have gone to investigate this silent volcano in California, have disappeared without trace, the local natives will not venture up the slopes
Quick Quiz Answers
- a borrowed landscape – a landscape beyond a garden that blends with the garden to extend it and improve the view
- an Eden – a good place to live
- contemporary – of the time – usually means modern times
- lush – green and thriving
- arid – dry
- a glade – a clearing in a wood or forest
- in the lee – sheltered from the prevailing winds
- symbiotic – two entities giving advantage to each other – like bees collecting food from flowers and pollinating them so that they can produce seeds – both the bees and flowers get something out of the relationship
The Garden of Eden
You Tube
Cadbury’s Smash ‘Instant Potato Mash’ Television Commercial | 1970’s UK TV ADVERT
