Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 567
Snow Globes
Hello Everyone
This year, l can wish you a happy Boxing Day!
Boxing Day, was traditionally the day when servants in big houses and on big estates visited their family to celebrate the holiday season.
But nowadays, people celebrate Boxing Day in their own way – and of course some people have to go to work.
Bill and Bob get presents on Christmas Day from Father Christmas, but on Boxing Day they get a pile of books from their parents.
This tradition lengthens Christmas for them, makes the books seem like very special presents, and gives their parents some peace and quiet to relax in after all the hard work they put in preparing for Christmas while Bill and Bob are reading.
But this year, Bill and Bob got a present each right in the middle of December from their mum for helping out in her shop as well.
She had a lot of new stock come in to be put up on shelves and her two sons were very helpful when she had customers to serve.
Snow globes are usually collectable items – or ornaments. They can be souvenirs from a holiday with a famous landmark reproduced in miniature or a fantasy landscape captured inside a tiny orb – but the ones in Bill and Bob’s mum’s shop were Christmas decorations.
So each boy was given a snow globe – they were a new line in the shop.
They were shaking their presents all the way home.
A snow globe is a transparent sphere, that is traditionally made of glass, but can now be made of plastic (which is a bit safer if you accidently drop it) with a miniature scene inside.
The scene will look different from different angles.
The scene might be a house, or a town, or figures like children building a snowman.
The globe is filled with water, and this is the medium through which the ‘snow’ inside swirls and falls when the globe is shaken.
Sometimes the globe has a music box attached for added interest.
We know that snow globes have been around for about 150 years.
ln the Paris Universal Exposition of 1878, a local glassware company exhibited a groups of snow globes containing a man with an umbrella – they were billed as novelty paperweights.
A paperweight is a heavy object that you can rest on a stack of papers so that nothing blows away in a sudden draught.
ln the 1889 Exposition in Paris, more globes were produced to commemorate the newly erected Eiffel Tower.
But the snow globe idea was actually patented in 1900, by Austrian, Erwin Perzy.
He ran a business that supplied medical instruments, and was asked by a local surgeon to supply a bright light bulb for his operating theatre.
ln those days, people who did fine work like embroidery used glass orbs filled with pure water – often from snow melt, to magnify light from a candle or other light source, so that they had an intensified light to work by.
These globes had been used since the Middle Ages – when glass was first brought to Europe from the Middle East.
Perzy tried adding tiny flakes of reflective glitter and other substances to help improve the effectiveness of the globe, but they sank too quickly. Then he tried semolina flakes. The swirling white flakes were slow to reach the bottom of the glass orb and reminded Perzy of a snowstorm. They gave him an idea.
He patented the idea, and with his brother started a roaring trade selling his novelty product in a shop in Vienna – the globes were not cheap.
His snow globes often had a small figure of a church inside made from pewter, which is a dull, silver-coloured metal.
These globes were heavy compared to modern globes.
The liquid inside was a light oil – his final recipe for the snow, containing magnesium powder, was a well-kept secret.
The shop still sells finely-crafted collectors items today.
Over the decades that followed the opening of the Vienna shop, many other companies started making these popular items, and of course the water-filled containers could take on other shapes as well, like small bottles for example.
Mass production made snow globes much cheaper to buy.
From the 1940s, they started to be made with clear plastic.
For a long time the ‘snow’ was made from tiny chips of bone or porcelain, then particles of gold foil or soap flakes that would not dissolve in water, but nowadays they are likely to be chips of white plastic.
Glycol (which is poisonous) is now added to the water to make the snow fall more slowly.
Some modern globes have their own motors to move them so that you can watch a prolonged snow fall without having to keep shaking them. Some have internal lights which make them even better Christmas decorations.
ln the last 20 years, inflatable globes for outdoor use have been sold. There is a blower inside the base to keep Halloween bats and ghosts, or Holiday Season snowflakes moving all the time it is switched on.
They are called tornado globes and l can see Bill and Bob wanting one of those too next!
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
Bill: Did you know that Uncle Ned had an accident last week?
Bob: Really?
Bill: Yes, he fell into a snow globe.
Bob: ls he alright?
Bill: Well yes, but he was badly shaken!
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
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
Well, I hope you all had a lovely day yesterday, and Santa brought you all you were hoping for.
I made Bill and Bob a very special present. I made one for Emily too, but hers was a little smaller.
I made two toy boxes, using my superior woodworking skills I must add, in the shape of a double decker bus.
The lid lifts up and there is plenty of space inside to put toys away. They can keep it in the living room or their bedroom.
The windows along each side have slots around them so that you can slip a picture into them. They are just the right size to put a photograph in – but they can put a picture in instead if they want to.
So they will be able to put anyone they want on their bus – looking out of the windows.
They might be friends and family or their favourite sports stars.
I expect Emily will put a lot of kittens on her bus.
But the toys the children got yesterday were forgotten about for a while this morning because it started snowing in Rocky Bay in the night and they rushed outside at first light to greet it and start building snowmen!
And all the adults can have a well-deserved rest – and maybe even a snooze!
NEWSDESK CHRISTMAS QUIZ
Which word can be placed before all of these words?
Man
Shoes
Drop
Fall
Storm
*********************
*********************
Quick Quiz
Can you fill in the gaps to make words that have to do with sleep?
- s _ _ _ _ _ r
- s _ _ _ _ e
- 40 w _ _ _ s
- s _ _ _ _ a
- to d _ _ p off
- d _ _e
- d _ _ _ _ _ _ g off
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE A COMEDY SHOW
This is a very special seasonal for families to be together.
Do you play games and put on shows to entertain each other?
Or perhaps you sit quietly and read a book or binge-watch television?
Bill and Bob decided so put on a show with their joke telling jesters. They have one each now so that they can have a banter going on between them.
See Blog Post 181 for the pattern for the jester.
They had to learn the jokes before the show. You can’t read a script when you are a stand up comedian!
It is a good way to learn things off by heart because jokes have a natural flow – like stories.
It helps train your memory – and that helps you a lot at school.
You can attach numbers to jokes, facts, paragraphs, etc. if you think it will help you recall them to mind.
Here are Bill and Bob’s jokes.
They hope you enjoy them!
l say, l say, l say…
Which is the richest country in the world?
Well, of course it’s lreland because its capital is always Dublin!
What did the vet say to the kitten when he went for a check up?
How are you feline today?
How do you know when a snail is ill?
lt looks a bit sluggish!
Do you know how to live the dream?
Yes, become a sleepwalker!
l have just been to the doctor to tell him about how l am suffering from terrible wind. Do you know what he gave me? A kite!
What do you buy a farmer to help keep his hillsides tidy?
A goathanger!
A man walked into a shoe shop and said, “Can l have a pair of crocodile shoes please?”
And the shop assistant said?
“Certainly Sir, what size feet does you crocodile have?”
l say, l say, l say! Do you like sailing?
No, l like terra firma! The firmer it is, the less terror l feel!
A man goes to the doctor and tells him he can’t stop telling lies.
And what did the doctor say?
“l don’t believe you!”
l saw a man in the Rocky Bay High Street pulling a piece of string along the road and l asked him why he was pulling a piece of string along the road.
What did he say?
He said, “Well, l couldn’t very well push it could l?
A traveller rings British Airways and says, “How long will it take me to fly to Australia?”
And the telephonist says, “Just a minute.”
And the traveller says, “Oh! Thank you very much!”
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
Snow!
Also flake and ball and scape and scene…
Can you think of any more?
Quick Quiz Answers
- slumber
- snooze
- 40 winks
- siesta
- to drop off
- doze
- drifting off
And Happy New Year
See you all again soon!
