Fairy Rings

Last year we came across a fairy ring, at first I didn't know what it was but nana do so she told me, we took a picture of it but we forgot about it, today we found where it was and remembered, when I got home I read up on it and here is some folklore as well as the photo we took

A fairy ring also known as elf circles is a naturally occurring ring or arc of mushrooms.They are found mainly in forested areas,but also appear in grasslands. The best time of year to see them is late summer to early autumn

Fairy rings are the subject of much folklore worldwide, particularly in Western Europe. They are often seen as hazardous or dangerous places, and linked with witches or the Devil in folklore. 

 

Different countries across Europe have their own folklore tales about fairy rings. In English and Celtic folklore, fairy rings were caused by fairies or elves dancing in a circle. It was said that if humans joined in the dance they would be punished by the fairies, and made to dance in the ring until they passed out from exhaustion (Bit extreme I think)

German folklore is a bit harsher as fairy rings were actually known as witches’ rings. And that witches would dance around them on the main spring solstice Ostara

Beltane A History

a Beltane fire🔥

Beltane is the Celtic May Day festival that we celebrate. Most commonly it is held on 1 May, or about halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. The Beltane festival marks the beginning of summer, and celebrates the fertility of the coming year. Homes and cattle were decorated with yellow May flowers.

Fire plays an important role in the Beltane festivities in history flames, smoke, and ashes from bonfires kindled during the festival were thought to have protective powers. All household fires would be put out and then re-lit from the Beltane bonfire.

a may queen

Down through the centuries May Day has been associated with fun, revelry and perhaps most important of all, fertility. The Day would be marked with village folk cavorting round the maypole (which sounds like fun), the selection of the May Queen and the dancing figure of the Jack-in-the-Green at the head of the procession. The Jack is thought to be a relic from those enlightened days when our ancient ancestors worshipped trees.

In the sixteenth century riots followed when May Day celebrations were banned. Fourteen rioters were hanged, and Henry VIII is said to have pardoned a further 400 who had been sentenced to death (that's a lot of people).

The May Day festivities almost completely vanished following the Civil War when Oliver Cromwell took control of the country in 1645. Describing maypole dancing as superstition and wickedness, a legislation was passed which saw the end of village maypoles throughout the country.

Dancing did not return to the village greens until the restoration of Charles II. who helped ensure the support of his subjects with the erection of a massive 40 metre high maypole in London’s Strand that's super tall. This pole signalled the return of the fun times, and remained standing for almost fifty years. that's mainly it other than there are some different types of food that

🐝Gardening To Help Bees & Butterflies 🦋

Our gardens are important to wildlife such as butterflies and bees because of the different plants they contain it doesn't matter if your garden is a mess because in winter . if you grow a good mix of flowers and bushes and shrub plants in your garden, you can provide a tone of nectar and pollen for all of the bees

Bees like many types of different flowers here is a list of ten

1. Hellebore 
2. Bluebell
3.  Bugle 
4. Crab apple
5.  Crocus 
6. Flowering cherry
7.  Forget-me-not 
8. Hawthorn
9.  Primrose
10.  Pulmonary

fox glove is a good one for bees as well because there are a tone of flowers on the plants but dont touch the plant without gloves or somthing as all of it can cause allergic reactions, but the berries are particularly poisonous so don't eat them. Here are ten flowers that butterflies like the most

1. Hebe
2. Lavender
3. Cornflowers
4. Fennel
5. knapweed
6. marjoram
7. Sedum
8. Verbena
9. valerian
10. buddleja

Buddleja is actually one of the best known nectar flowers for adult butterflies, it produces blooms over a number of weeks between summer and autumn. Also hebes are great too, as well as being a reliable evergreen shrub, hebes attracts a range of insects bees and butterflies in particular. I would sugest planting some of the flowers as it will help nature and it looks pretty.

Also we cant forget moths not all of them eat cloths.
Night-scented plants are particularly good for moths, and actually evolved their night-time perfume to attract moths to pollinate their flowers. here are ten flowers that moths love to eat

1.  Jasmine
2.  Honeysuckle
3.  Evening Primrose
4.  Sweet Rocket 
5.  Night-scented Stock
6. Ivy
7. Michaelmas daisy
8. Sedum spectabile
9. dandelions
10. pale petunias

Don't be to tidy with your garden because while most moths breed in grass the lava spend winter hidden in the leaf  litter and plant debris so don't tidy up your garden until late spring. also leave some weeds in your garden as at the beginning of spring bees practically don't have any flowers other than dandelions to eat. It dosen't matter if you havent got a garden you could just get a window box and plant a tone of nectar filled flower

The History Of Toys

For centuries kids have been playing with toys even if its just a piece of string. Basically any thing can be a toy; a stick could be a sword, a nail could be a seat for a fairy, an acorn could be cup for a tiny elf. Little things like that.

Toys may look different depending on what materials are available to make the from. For instance a metal yo yo could be shiny or dull, a dolls house could be made out of plastic or wood. in the tutor era some rocking horses were made out of hay.


Teddy bears were made in the years 1902-1903 they were made in two different country's America and Germany, America made them first in 1902 but because the two country's are so far apart Germany didn't know and thought that they had made them first in 1903.
Teddy bears were named after the USA president Teddy Roosevelt.
My oldest teddy bear is almost ten and I've had it since I was three

this is the oldest toy found in Britain

The oldest toy found in Britain was found near Stonehenge. It looks like a hedgehog and it was found in a three year child's grave it is possibly 2,500 years old it is the earliest known depiction of a hedgehog in Britain.

These days only some kids still play with things without battery's but a vast majority only play with electronic toys with battery's I myself play with both. The first electronic toy was called pong and it was made in the early 1970s by Nolan Bushnell.

Covid-19

Covid-19 is a new illness that affects your lungs and air ways. It's a virus that has spread all around the world. The symptoms are similar to if you had the flu or a cold. At the moment, all over the world, over 590,000 people have covid-19 and there are 27,367 people dead.

Covid-19 also affects me, for one we have bad internet connection here and as most schools have shut down thousands of kids will go on internet, so it has gone from bad to terrible. Me and my sister have been limited to 2-3 hours on the internet by my Nan because she needs to work.

Nanny has had to close her online shop because she can't guarantee that the things she's sold will get to the people who have bought them because of so many people being sick and self isolating so we won't have as much income.

I think people are being stupid though I saw some of it on the 11th when I went shopping, everyone was panic buying things like bread, meat, bottles of water and toilet roll like they were going to die of hunger, also I don't get why people are buying bottled water when there is water in the tap drink that instead of wasting money on something that is killing the earth.

We have made more recipes or altered our usual recipes to make them go further we don't have as much food as we normally do. Nanny is hoping to only go out once a fortnight but we probably will have to go out more for milk because most shops are limiting you to one carton per visit.

Some people are going out like nothing matters and are letting there kids walk around the streets this actually proves that some people don't care that they could be spreading the virus and potentially killing others. They are being selfish and are a risk to other peoples health.

Coastal Landfill

I think we can all agree that the sea is becoming more and more polluted every day.
So much so that there's now plastic pebbles floating in the sea and the beaches are covered in rubbish like plastic bottles and tin cans.

Some of this is down to the 1200 or so coastal landfills in the UK that are at risk from erosion.
Some are already spilling tonnes of waste into the sea leading to a pollution time bomb around the UK coastline.

Powerful storms and rising sea levels mean once-hidden waste could be exposed to pollute oceans and beaches, according to coastal policy expert Mark Stratton.

"One of the biggest risks of doing nothing at these sites is that the defences will fail and you’ll potentially have former landfill either eroding out onto the foreshore or leaching into the water. Alongside that there’s a potential impact on human health depending on what’s in the sites" he said.


Landfill sites before the 1990s had basically no restrictions about what rubbish could be dumped in them, therefore not a lot is known about what they contain so it can be very dangerous.

Many landfill sites were on the coast and some were used to raise land levels and even as part of flood defences, but as climate change is bringing higher sea levels and stronger storms the flood defences are weakening and in some cases bursting.

There's probably over 77,000 tonnes of waste in all those landfill sites combined. Leaking landfills may also be the source of the bizarre plastic pebbles that are being found on beaches, experts say these lumps of plastic are formed from burnt waste dating back to the 1980s.

Maleficent: mistress of evil

We went to see Maleficent: mistress of evil on the 13th it was better than I thought it would be.

Maleficent: mistress of evil is an exciting film. It has twists and turns and I thought it was great in every way. So here's a bit about the film: Five years have past since king Stefan died and Aurora is now 21. When a hedgehog looking creature steals Auroras crown she wondered what was going on. she follows the hedgehog thing to a willow tree and there she finds not only her crown but prince Philip who proposed.

                                (⚠WARNING: spoiler alert⚠)

When Maleficent was almost killed some one saves her some one just like her... She then wakes up in a strange room in strange clothes and she can here voices. So she decides to explore what the sound is and discovers a whole room full of people that are just like her with horns and wings and in the end they all go to war.

Book Review: Clip-Clop Chronicles By Angelica Witherspoon-Cassanova

Ok it's a great book and I have read it many times. Now for a small extract from the book.

The rain poured down in white sheets. I was glad I was able to finish my grandmothers yard and put snapper up before the rain started. I had one more client left and if the rain didn't let up, I would have to wait till Tuesday to do Mrs. Suttons' yard.

I give this a......




  because it is a lovely book and it makes me feel like I'm back on a horse.

Book Review: All The Things That Could Go Wrong By Stewart Foster

Ok so all the things that could go wrong is a great book. It is about
two boys, one called Alex and one called Dan here's a little preview of the book.

Dan is angry. Nothing has been the same since his big brother left and he's taking it out on the nearest and weakest target: Alex.

Alex is struggling. His O.C.D. makes it hard for him to leve the house, especially when Dan and his gang are waiting to get him at school.

Then the boys' mums arrange for them to meet up and  finish biulding a raft that Dan had started with his brother. The two enemies stuck together for the whole of the school holidays- what could go wrong?

ok so I'll give that a ...



for being so good and giving me a view of what being bullied feels like.

Book Review: Blitzcat by Robert Westall 📖

Blitzcat by Robert Westall is a great book. As soon as I started reading I was absorbed ( that could be because I'm a bookworm though ). Any way I'll tell you a bit about the book.  Ok to start of with its about a cat called Lord Gort who tries to find her old master. By travelling many miles and  having many new masters she succeeds in her goal.

But her old master didn't recognise her which made me cry a little bit at the end. Over all its a good book and if you like emotional stories this book is for you. I give this book ...

Bridlington 🌊

On the train to Bridlington.

 Yesterday we went to Bridlington for 40p. this was an offer that cost 10p per journey for an adult and 5p per journey for a child. To get to the station though we went on the bus to Doncaster

The first thing we went to was a couple of charity shops on the way to the beach and we found some good books. Next was the beach. One of the things that nanny wanted was stones with a holes in called hag stones, she wanted them for her business. Almost as soon as she walked on to the beach she found one.

We picked up loads of shells that looked pretty (and several bits of crab). In the end me and abbie took our shoes and socks of and rolled up our trouser legs then went running into the sea.

We then got Ice cream and decided which arcade to play in. At first I couldnt win but i timed it right and I won a lot of stuff sadly I didn't get a prize. But it doesn't matter because nanny got us two PS3 games each.

we went to a shop that sells fudge ( thats not a pach on my grandads)  and spent about fifteen minutes
trying to choose what to have. after that we went back
down to the beach and by then the tide was out so there
was more beach

leeds once more

On the tenth me and nanny went to Leeds to go to a museum. It only cost us 30p which was brilliant.

    As we came out of the station we saw someone giving away  Tropicana       who was really nice.

When we got to the museum we went up to the first floor. The first floor didn't have much on but there was a special clock called the Leeds clock.

mine is much better 

 On the second floor there was loads of things to do with the wars, there was a old desk <¬ and a thing that showed were the main bombing points were.

The third floor was much more fun as it has a mummy ¬> and  loads of Egyptian hieroglyphics and stuff 

there was a head statue of Hera Greek goddess and queen of heaven also married to Zeus god of the sky.

Then we went down to the ground  floor  and saw a huge cabinet that used to have several odd things in, including a hand, a coin, cows leather with the fur still on it. there were more things but I'll not list them.

Then we went down to the basement  and went in to a room with stuffed animals like, leopards, bears and monkeys and things but the tigers were most impressive this one here was a rug once then they moulded it back into shape an stuffed it. 🐅