Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 596
Dragons
Hello Everyone
What do you know about dragons?
Do you think that they are just legendary creatures from story books?
The most famous dragon from literature may well be Smaug; he was a bad guy wasn’t he? He was destructive and dangerous.
Smaug inhabited the Gnomes’ cave and fell asleep on top of their pile of gold.
He destroyed human townships.
He featured in The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.
But different dragons in books can be friendly, scary, kind, greedy, adventurous or trainable.
ln Western cultures, dragons are often depicted as fire-breathing, evil monsters.
Dragons are also very often associated with wealth, and there are statues of dragons standing at every entrance to the City of London where about a fifth of our country’s wealth is generated.
They are facing outwards in order to guard the wealth inside the city against attack.
Dragons feature very much in Chinese culture. and representations of them dance on the street every Chinese New Year which starts around the end of January/the beginning of February – it varies from year to year. lt is also called the ‘Spring Festival’ by the Chinese.
The dances are signifying the desire for dragons to look kindly on people’s business affairs and bring prosperity to them.
ln Chinese culture, dragons are very much good guys. They have long snake-like bodies; maybe you could even say a water serpent form and can have different looks.
They are powerful and kind. They are guardians of water in nature and have the power to control it – so they are the creatures to ask when you need rain to come during a drought.
Chinese dragons don’t breathe fire; they breathe clouds. They could live in the sea or the sky or in rivers.
They can also control seasons and harvests. Ancient farmers made offerings to the dragon gods in the hope they would oversee the bringing of good harvests. They did not want drought or floods to ruin their crops; but they did need regular rain.
lt is thought that dragon boat races might have begun as a celebration for good harvests.
Some people put pictures of dragons up in their homes or business which signify the hope of attracting protection and success.
There are quite a few different kinds of Chinese dragons and they are different colours. The Spiritual Dragon is blue and controls the wind and rain, the Celestial Dragon lives in the sky, the Coiling Dragon lives in the sea, the Treasure Dragon can protect personal wealth and then the Dragon King is the most powerful of all – to name but a few.
There are creatures that look a bit like dragons in the animal kingdom and some of them even have dragon in their name like the Komodo dragon.
This is a lizard that lives in lndonesia and it can grow up to 3m (or 10 feet) long, which is big, but not what you think of as dragon size really.
They are apex predators; which means that they are hunters but are not hunted by other animals. They lay eggs and have a toxic bite – but they are still not what you think of as a dragon of legend.
No other kind of lizard living on earth looks exactly like the dragon of stories either.
So dragons are really only creatures of mythology, right?
Well, maybe not!
What about creatures that once lived and are no more?
What about flying dinosaurs? Some of them were really big like quetzalcoatlus.
ln 2022, scientists (called palaeontologists, or fossil hunters) found the fossilized remains of a new-to-science species of giant flying reptile in the Andes Mountains in Argentina in South America.
And when l say big; l mean the body was as long as the length of a London double-decker bus!
The creature was so big that the astounded scientists decided to call it the Dragon of Death. When the wings were fully extended they measured 9m or 30 feet from tip to tip.
This creature, known as a pterosaur, hunted in the skies around 86 million years ago. They know this because they could date the rocks that the fossils were found in back to that time. This time was called the Cretaceous period.
The Dragon of Death lived about 20 million years before the asteroid impact in the north of Mexico that triggered the demise of the dinosaurs along with three-quarters of all of life on Earth. lt was one of the first creatures on Planet Earth to transport itself by using wings and hunt prey in the sky.
This pterosaur may not have looked what we think of as a dragon, but it seemed to have a lot of characteristics of one.
lt must have been a terrifying sight. The Dragon of Death was the largest pterosaur ever found in South America and one of the largest ever found in the world. The palaeontologists didn’t have any record of any other species that was a close relative to this newly-found species.
But of course, other pterosaurs were already known to scientists and fossils of dinosaurs have been around for humans to find for a long time.
Do you think the ideas of dragons came from these long-ago creatures, or is the fact pterosaurs once existed just a coincidence?
Dinosaurs still exist today – we now call them birds.
Maybe the idea of dragons came from birds instead.
ln the past, before aeroplanes were invented, birds had abilities that humans did not have and could only wonder at. They could fly and disappear over the horizon to unseen lands. Did that seem like a magical trait to our ancient ancestors?
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: lt says here in the Rocky Bay Gazette that an enormous fly has been found in the Rocky Bay Police Station.
The desk sergeant has called in the swat team.
Bill: Tee hee hee!
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
City of London dragon
A creature or mythology
Chinese Dragon
Smaug
Komodo dragon
Snapdragons open their ‘mouths’
when you push them at the sides
Quetzalcoatlus could fly
A pterosaur
A heron
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
This week, Bill, Bob, Henry and Emily got together in Bill and Bob’s bedroom to write some questions for their team for the class Friday afternoon quiz next week. They used a theme of colours in their questions.
Would you like to see if you can answer their questions?
- What colour are lion’s eyes?
- What is the colour is at the top of the rainbow?
- What colour is the central light in a set of traffic lights?
- What are the colours of the Swedish flag?
- What colour is an emerald?
- What colour is cyan?
- What colours are the club symbols on playing cards?
- What colour are artichokes?
- What colour is the black box on an aeroplane?
- What colour are hazel eyes?
- What colour is a Samoyed dog?
- What colour is Thomas the Tank Engine?
- What colour were the first Ford cars?
- What colour are the old-fashioned telephone boxes with a lot of pans of glass?
- What colour is a 20p piece coin?
- What colour is an amethyst?
- What colour is rose quartz?
- What colour is a grizzly bear?
- What colour is the braid on a naval officer’s cap?
- What is the highest colour belt awarded in judo?
*********************
*********************
Quick Quiz
Do you know what these words and phrases mean?
- making a pile
- a man cave
- a hot mess
- sparks fly
- fortune favours the brave
- flying high
- a treasure trove
- to wing it
- a branding iron
- a Midas touch
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE SOME COLOURED PENClLS FOR A 12″ DOLL’S HOUSE
If you made a house for a 12” doll from Blog Post 587, then you may be adding accessories to it.
Here are some coloured pencils for to go on your doll’s desk.
Toothpicks are just the right size.
Cut them to the length you want and colour the sides and points with coloured paint.
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
- What colour are lion’s eyes? – yellow
- What is the colour is at the top of the rainbow? – red
- What colour is the central light in a set of traffic lights? – amber
- What are the colours of the Swedish flag? – blue and yellow
- What colour is an emerald? – green
- What colour is cyan? – blue
- What colours are the club symbols on playing cards? – black
- What colour are artichokes? – green
- What colour is the black box on an aeroplane? – orange
- What colour are hazel eyes? – brown and green
- What colour is a Samoyed dog? – white
- What colour is Thomas the Tank Engine? – blue (and a bit of red and yellow)
- What colour were the first Ford cars? – black
- What colour are the old-fashioned telephone boxes with a lot of pans of glass? – red
- What colour is a 20p piece coin? – silver
- What colour is an amethyst? – purple
- What colour is rose quartz? – pink
- What colour is a grizzly bear? – brown
- What colour is the braid on a naval officer’s cap? – gold
- What is the highest colour belt awarded in judo? – black (10th level)
Quick Quiz Answers
- making a pile – making a lot of money
- a man cave – a room or shed where a man can hide himself away
- a hot mess – much confusion
- sparks fly – a fight
- fortune favours the brave – you might get lucky if you try, but you won’t if you don’t
- flying high – being successful
- a treasure trove – a collection of valuable items
- to wing it – to make things up as you go along
- a branding iron – a hot piece of metal used to mark horses and cattle
- a Midas touch – managing to turn what you touch to gold = make a success of the projects you get involved in
King Midas
