We all know that South Africa has terrible road safety stats.
The Minister of Transport Mrs Diplou Peters is always saying that children need to learn about road safety. It’s true. They do. The Minister of Basic Education, Mrs Angie Motshekga is always saying that children must read more. That’s true too – they should.
Here we are… pleasing two ministers with one book!
Sibo Looks Right is a book that contains all the rules of the road, including cycling – in a fun, easy to read manner.
Best of all – you don’t have to take our word for it – you can click on the link and read the book for yourself. Free!
Our plan is to get as many companies and people to pledge books – once we have reached our target of 3000 books (we’d love to get more than this too) we will ask people to honour their pledges and deposit the corresponding amount so that Lets Look Publishers can print these books and we can distribute them to the children.
Science Centres in South Africa have kindly agreed to help with distributing the books.
Here’s the crunch – we’d really like to do this BEFORE Easter!
So we need you to dash off and pledge a book – or two – or as many as you want to.
Challenge other people to pledge books too.
Of course, if you pledge more than 50 books we can put your name/logo in the back of the book. If you pledge 1000 books – we can put your logo in the front of the book. There are great advertising and marketing aspects to sponsoring books.
If you read Sibo Looks Right you will see that Nash Nissan sponsored a large quantity of money towards our initial crowdfunding campaign and so their logo was featured in the front of the book. If you look on the back cover – there are more logos and names – these are all the lovely people who helped make this book happen in the first place.
Now we need to print more books and get them out to schools and children – FREE.
PS – The Sibo Series is already being read in schools and libraries around the country. In fact, The North West Province Education Department has just ordered more than 500 each of 10 Sibo titles and they are being delivered as we speak!
Mum and I got home the other day and our little neighbour dashed up to chat to me. She’s such a cute kid and always has funny things to say.
That particular day I noticed that her toe was all smooshed.
“Khanyi” I exclaimed, “Whatever did you do to your toe?”
She shrugged and answered that she had fallen and hurt it. I told her that she should be more careful with her little toes in future – they were not big enough to mess with.
“But I’m always unlucky!” she sighed. “I am forever falling and hurting myself.”
Mum and I looked at each other.
“Noooo…. You can’t say things like that! You have to think of yourself as being a lucky girl. If you think about being unlucky then that just attracts bad luck. Tomorrow you are going to have a good luck day. No more bad luck!”
But she just shrugged and said… “I’ll try – but I’ll probably have another bad luck day.”
We went inside and I felt sad that she is so little and yet she already has such a negative attitude.
Dad is always telling us about the law of attraction. Our minds are the most powerful things that we have. If we decide that we are going to have a good day – then we probably will.
But you, yourself, really have to believe this one hundred percent.
You can’t think in wishy-washy terms. You have to tell yourself that you are going to have a good day. Then you have to envision having a good day. The power of thought!
Of course, in my case it’s pretty simple. I envision eating a nice cold ice-cream at school. Then I take some of my pocket money to school and buy one. It’s a simple as that. The ice-cream man is there, the weather is good for eating ice-cream and I don’t lose my money. Everything works.
Or I see my maths paper in my mind’s eye with a nice big A+ on it. Or course I know that I’d put in a lot of work beforehand and could reasonably expect an A+.
Nothing worth having ever comes free or easy. We probably would not appreciate it if it did.
And on the odd occasions when you do fail, you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself down and try again.
Hope you all have a simply fabulous day! (Go on – imagine yourself having a fabulous day.)
Hope you all have survived the first week of school.
I was so tired the second morning that I almost did not make it to breakfast. Sadly my mum nagged me so much that I did not have a choice.
Sibo! She said. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!
Whaaatttt? I am not even hungry yet at breakfast time. I have done nothing but sleep all night.
You’ve been fasting all night, she said. That’s where the name comes from – “Break Fast”. You must eat to have energy to manage for the rest of the day.
I yawned and staggered off to the breakfast table.
Okay – I’ll just have a piece of toast.
No ways – she smiled at me. You will have cereal, egg on toast and a piece of fruit!
I glared at her and she wagged her finger at me. No attitude from you missy! Eat your food.
Research shows that you can remember things better when you eat a decent breakfast. This is because the food restores glucose levels, an essential carbohydrate that is needed for our brains to function. I suppose that this is important so that we can remember what we learn at school.
Also – they say that if you eat breakfast as your biggest meal of the day – you are more likely to lose weight. Probably because then you are not always hungry and snacking on junk food all the time instead of eating a proper meal.
Not only does my mum make me eat breakfast, but she also makes me eat it at the table. Sitting properly too, not slouched all over the place. I’m not even allowed to have my elbows on the table to prop my head up.
She and Dad sit and eat breakfast with me. Dad tried reading his newspaper once and Mum gave him a very evil eye. No ways – she said. This is family chat time.
She’s always very chirpy in the mornings. Dad tends to answer with just one word. I don’t really think he’s such a morning person.
Must admit though – I do feel a bit more sprightly after eating breakfast – maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all. And remember how good eggs are for you – we’ve talked about that before.
Last week you had to get off your phone – this week you have to get off your butt!
Yip – we’re talking about exercise.
It‘s so important. Like getting enough sleep – remember – we covered that a while ago ago.
Getting enough exercise applies to big people just as much as it does to little ones. Often I ask my friends if they want to come and ride bike with me and they say… nah – I’m having fun watching TV.
Yet there are so many fun things we can do that can be counted as exercise.
Like hula hooping . That’s my favourite. You can either buy one or make your own hula hoop out of irrigation pipe and a hose connector. Then tape it up to look pretty. Moms can do this too – it’s really good exercise, strengthens all your core muscles and gives you nicely toned arms and legs – especially if you learn some tricks. There are loads of how-to-do-tricks videos on the internet.
Another form of great exercise is jumping. Of course if you have a trampoline, or access to one, then it’s really easy to jump – but you can also skip using a skipping rope or play hop scotch. These all count as jumping.
You are wondering why jumping is good for you – aren’t you?
It releases toxins and builds bone mass. Obviously it also increases flexibility too. Bouncing around on a trampoline develops motor skills – because it allows a child’s brain to function bilaterally. That means it gets both sides of your brain and both sides of your body to work together so that you don’t lose your balance and fall over while bouncing! Apparently it also helps improve cellulite – that should get your mom’s attention.
Never forget – when you are outside having exercise, the sunlight encourages the production of Vitamin D – which is responsible for a healthy immune system and brain.
Our brain chemistry is also affected by posture, positioning, as well as specific movements. Try this next time you are stressed and feeling a bit like you cannot cope.
Stand up straight with your feet apart and your hands on your hips for a few minutes. Breathe deeply and imagine you have super powers… let me know if it works please.
All in all exercise makes you feel better – no matter what you do. Plus it’s good for your body too.
Sjoe! Seems like one day it was the middle of winter and then all of a sudden –kapow! It’s summertime. What happened to Spring?
The rest of the country still seems to be having all up and down weather – but Gauteng is just plain hot already.
When it’s hot we get sweaty. If we’ve run around the place or had a workout at the gym or even sometimes just sitting in the sun makes a person dampish. Sweat cools us off when our body temperature rises. It’s very necessary – otherwise we would overheat.
Here’s a little experiment you can do to see how sweat makes us feel cooler… all you need is 1 pair of socks and a fan.
Wet one sock with warm water and then wring it out so that it is damp but not dripping wet.
Put the socks on – with one foot in a wet sock and one foot in a dry sock (yes – really – do it).
Sit for about 5 minutes with the bottoms of your feet facing the blowing fan – do not get your toes caught in the whirling fan blades either please!
Does the foot with the wet sock feel different from the foot with the dry sock?
What happens is this… As the fan blows, the water in the damp sock evaporates. The heat from your foot gives the liquid molecules a little energy and they change from slow moving liquid to fast moving gas molecules. As the water in the sock evaporates into the air, it carries heat energy with it. The heat comes from your foot – so obviously your foot cools down. Sweat works the same way – the heat energy from your body gets transferred to your sweat and then into the air as the water in your sweat evaporates.
See! Sweat really is cool.
Here are some skinny facts…
The thickest skin is on the soles of your feet – 3mm.
The thinnest skin is on your eyelid – only 1mm
We all shed a complete layer of skin every month. The top layer consists of hard, horny dead cells and they flake off all the time. Most of the dust in your house is actually dead skin. Errgh gross! New skin is forming all the time below the old skin – that’s why we never run out of skin. Bodies are clever things hey?
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) “108 million units of donated blood are collected globally every year. Nearly 50% of these blood donations come from high income countries – home to less than 20% of the world’s population”.
Sadly though – many people still die each year because they do not have access to safe blood and blood products.
You are probably wondering what exactly is “safe blood”?
It’s blood that is free from HIV, Hepatitis B and C and syphilis – these can easily be transmitted through transfusion.
In South Africa, every unit of blood that is collected goes through stringent testing to ensure that it is safe. Scary to note that in some other countries this does not happen due to a variety of reasons – shortage of staff, irregular supply of test kits, poor quality test kits or general poor quality of the laboratories.
So how much of your precious life blood do they take? A mere 480ml – that’s all. It’s less than 10% of the total blood volume of an adult. Most adults have between 4.5 and 5 liters of blood in their bodies. (However, if a person weighs less than 50kg they are not allowed to donate because they don’t actually have enough blood to spare.) The lost fluid is replaced in the body within 36 hours.
You are, by law, not allowed to give blood more than every 56 days. This means that a person would only give three or four times a year. Not too much to ask really – is it?
In South Africa people between the age of 16 and 65 are allowed to give blood – if they are fit and healthy that is. There’s a questionnaire that you have to fill out – regarding your health and life style. They do a finger prick test to check iron levels before donating. Blood pressure is also checked to make sure that people are actually healthy enough to donate.
Remember – you need to eat and drink enough fluid (not alcohol) before you donate.
Or course, if you’ve had flu or have been sick in the last few days you are not allowed to donate because it would be bad for you.
Hands up who has been to visit the sea? It’s a fabulous place to have a holiday – especially if the sun is shining and it’s a nice day. It’s also lovely to look at the ocean on a cold stormy day – watch the waves break and the water change colour.
I guess we all take the sea for granted in many ways. Yet humans have been treating the sea very casually and horribly for years and years.
Did you know… waste matter from sewerage and agriculture gets dumped in the sea? This sometimes has revolting things in it that can cause dangerous types of sea plants to bloom in the water near the coast. When these blooms die and rot they use up all the oxygen in the water and then there isn’t any left for the fish. They call these areas “creeping dead zones”.
Just the name sounds incredibly scary.
Worse – a lot of other stuff also gets dumped into the ocean without people realizing it – all sorts of chemicals. Some of those chemicals are called POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants). These ghastly POPs don’t break down and disappear like lots of other chemicals do. They end up staying in the tissues of living organisms – like fish – that we eat. Yuk! Never mind the fact that these make the fish sick, they can also sometimes cause nasty illnesses in humans or even affect the way that we grow.
The oceans are huge and one would think that there are loads of fish swimming around just waiting to be caught and eaten. Well – this is not quite true anymore either. Sadly unsustainable fishing practices have, in some cases, left dangerously depleted fish stocks which have also jeopardized some marine ecosystems too.
Did you know… 312 million kilograms of seafood is consumed annually in South Africa? Sjoe!
This is why there are things like lists. We are all supposed to eat fish off the GREEN list only. The fish on the orange and red lists are endangered and they should not be caught. In fact it’s not okay to eat them if you go to a restaurant either because this creates a demand for them. Don’t do it!
Lately scientists have figured out that cigarette butts are one of the most abundant types of litter found around. Studies estimate that 4.5 trillion cigarette butts find their way into the environment each year.
Much worse, it’s one of nastiest, deadliest forms of waste.
People who would not dream of pitching a cool drink tin out of the car window will happily chuck a burning butt out. Not particularly caring that it can set fire to something. Burning butts are often the cause of serious veldt fires.
People also drop them on pavements or into gutters, where the wind blows them into storm waters and other places.
They also flick butts casually into water – dams, the sea and rivers.
You probably wouldn’t flick a cigarette butt into your swimming pool – but why not? Because you or your family might swallow it whilst swimming and that would be horrible.
So why not care if a fish, bird or animal chomps it instead?
Cigarette butts are tiny little bundles of toxins. They are poisonous. They get into our marine ecosystems and cause havoc with the wildlife and the quality of the water.
We all know that water is extremely precious.
Due to the fact that cigarette filters are specifically designed to accumulate toxins, each butt can contain up to 60 known human carcinogens including… arsenic, formaldehyde, chromium and lead. In fact, there are around 1,400 potential chemical additives.
Toxicological data has shown that these chemicals from discarded butts are capable of leaching into surrounding water where they can hurt aquatic life. Nicotine has been shown to be lethal to various fish, crustaceans, zooplankton, and other aquatic organisms, as well as being a known insecticide.
On top of leeching toxins, cigarette butts present an ingestion, choking and poisoning hazard to wildlife who mistake them for dinner!
Cigarette filters are also composed of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic that can hang around in the environment for long periods of time. Plastics of this sort have been found in the stomachs of sea turtles, fish, birds, whales and other marine creatures.
You know what is also really scary – even those people who put their cigarettes out in the designated places have no guarantee that their butts won’t also end up in the water. The bins get emptied. Butts are chucked onto rubbish dumps. Here they are blown around and it’s highly likely that they end up where they shouldn’t as well.
You all know how I like to read… well sometimes mum is really irritating when she interrupts me in the middle of a good story and says it’s time for bed. I beg for another half hour but she says that kids need to sleep for at least 10 or 11 hours a night to be happy and healthy. She reckons I get grumpy when I don’t have enough sleep.
Sometimes I cheat and read with a torch under my blankets. The other day Mum caught me out and I was in serious trouble – she took my book away for two whole days!
I was quite sure that Mum was fibbing about how much sleep in needed so decided to google and find out why exactly why so many hours are needed.
Firstly between the age of 7 and 12 years old, we really do need to sleep those 10 or 11 hours a night. This is not just to stop us from becoming cranky either. It’s the time when our muscles repair themselves during the night. And don’t just think arm and leg muscles – it also includes our heart muscle.
Sleep also controls the signals that tell us when we are hungry or when we are full up – which allows us to maintain a good weight.
While we are happily snoozing our brains stores up all the stuff we have learned during the day – so that we can recall it later when we need it.
If we don’t sleep properly at night, it is harder to pay attention at school during the day. We tend to make more mistakes if we are tired than if we are well rested.
If we don’t get enough sleep at night – we could always have a little nap during the day to make up the sleep time. Preferably not during school time though because we’d land up in trouble with the teacher.
Apparently – it should take us about 15 to 20 minutes to fall asleep from when our head hits the pillow.
Of course teenagers can get away with a little less sleep – like 8 to 9 hours a night. Half the time they don’t get anywhere near this amount of sleep and so they really do need to sleep in over the weekends.
Seems like the older you get the less sleep you need.
A year or so ago my daughter, Emma, came to visit. She’d only been here for a day when she started whinging that she was missing her hula hoop.
I rolled my eyes and said we could go trawl the shops and find her a hoop (thinking to myself what kind of nonsense is this – being addicted to hula hooping).
She sighed, then remarked that we would not be buying a hoop – we would be making one.
So off we went to the hardware store and bought all the necessary paraphernalia to make a couple of different hoops. I looked at the roll of five metres of irrigation pipe… how many hoops can you make out of that then – two or three?
Just one – she replied.
Opened my mouth to argue but the look in her beady blue eye told me to shut the hell up as I had no idea what I was talking about.
I was flat out busy organising a conference at the time so took myself off to my office and left the business of hula hoop making to Emma.
When I emerged a few hours later I was amazed to see a circus creature dancing on our lawn.
The general misconception is that hula hooping is for kids. You see those little hoops for sale in the stores and don’t even give them a second glance. Yet there was my child (okay, she’s 25 but she’s a tiny skinny little thing) rocking this enormous hoop – taller than she was.
Doing tricks nogal!
I watched in amazement. She was so good at it. Flipping that huge hoop around and about. So graceful.
Here, she said. Have a go.
It looked so easy.
I grabbed the hoop and waggled madly. It plummeted to the earth. I tried again. And again… and again.
Hmmm… handed the hoop back to Emma – hula hooping is not for me.
Don’t be a wuz Mom, the nasty little weasel scoffed. She took the hoop and demonstrated where my feet should be and how I should stand up straight, shoulders down, tummy tucked in tight.
I had another go. Then stomped back up to my office in disgust. Next morning I noticed there were bruises on my ribs. I was horrified but according to Emma, this was perfectly normal.
It took me two weeks to get that wretched hoop to stay around my middle. And there was none of that graceful hand thing either – rigid dinosaur paws more like it.
Gradually I relaxed and let it flow. Fudgie (the dog) and Ralph (the cat) could stand under the hoop without getting clonked on the head every few seconds. (They consider this a new form of play.)
One day I hauled out a skirt that had gone from being loose and comfy to a tad on the tight side. Zipped it up and immediately noticed that the squidgy bits of body that used to hang over the sides of the skirt had considerably diminished. In fact, it looked halfway decent again.
Realised that I must have sneakily lost a centimetre or two.
I’m not a gym person – have never set foot in one and don’t plan to either. Can’t do yoga because Fudge thinks I’m playing with her and running would surely make my heart attack me. I like walking – but not uphill. The best exercise I’ve come across to date is rebounding – or jumping on my mini-trampoline. That’s great for building leg muscle and toning your butt!
I was totally delighted. Just when I’d resigned myself to being 52 years old and taking up more space in the world than I’d ever done before – here was a magical way of doing something about it.
In my own yard and in my own time!
And let’s be honest – it’s not like I’d been doing it all day every day either – maybe 10 minutes a day in several small sessions.
Emma smirked. See – hula hooping is not just for kids. It’s a great exercise.
Gave her the evil eye – right – now show me how to make these flabby arms not-so-flabby in time for the conference.
She gulped – the conference was less than two weeks away. She demonstrated some arm crunches and stretches. Three sets of those – three times a day. Get going, Mom!
My eyes lit up – I envisaged going to the conference with nice firm, brown arms – you can’t help but get tanned whilst hooping outside. (Of course, it rained almost the whole conference and my half-toned, tanned arms never even saw the light of day.)
Emma was here for two months. In that time I shaped up – lost a couple of kilos plus a good couple of centimetres around my middle and upper body. My arms look better than they have done in years my back has those nice muscly bits. I have improved my posture no end.
Last year our dog was sick and I had to lug all 29kg’s of Fattie Fudges up the stairs to my office – I could do it – thanks to hula hooping and strengthening my core muscles.
I now hula around the grass each day. It’s a great way to relax, have fun and keep in shape at the same time.
And it’s not just for ladies either – Chris, my husband, is also busy mastering the art.
The big hoops are great for toning up and losing centimetres – but if you want to lose more weight the smaller hoops are better – because you expend more energy keeping it up. However, the kid’s hoops that you buy in the shops are good for doing tricks, but are too light for weight loss – you need a heavier larger hoop.
It’s really easy to make your own hoop too! Not expensive either.
I even managed to sneak into the South African Book Fair by promising to read Sibo in Space while hula hooping in my giant space ship.
Ginny hula hooping at the Jozi Book Fair in Aug 2015
