Pain in the butt

The last day of May is World No Tobacco Day.

Luckily I am too young to have to quit smoking because I’ve never started – but I know it’s a really hard habit to kick.

Truth is that smoking‘s bad for you. Not only can it cause lung disease, it can also cause heart problems and can cause cancer almost anywhere in your body too.

Luckily it’s now illegal to smoke with your children in the car – because second hand smoke is almost as bad for you as the real thing. At least people who smoke choose to do so. The kids who get to breathe their parental agents smoke have no choice. That’s just nasty!

Not only is smoking bad for people, it’s bad for environment and the animals.

Lately scientists have figured out that cigarette butts are one of the most abundant types of litter found around. That means there are plenty of butts out there. (Studies estimate that 4.5 trillion cigarette butts find their way into the environment each year.)

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. And they do too – burning butts are often the cause of serious veldt fires.

People also drop them on pavements or into gutters, where the wind will blow them into storm waters and all sorts of other places.

Beaches are ideal for putting out butts. One huge ashtray – right? Wrong.

Or… they flick butts casually into water – dams, the sea and rivers.

Cigarette butts are tiny little bundles of toxins. In other words… poisonous. They get into our marine ecosystems and cause havoc with the wildlife and the quality of the water.

And we all know that water is extremely precious – right?

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. Then they get blown around and it’s highly likely that they also end up where they shouldn’t.

Take care where you put those butts please people.

Sibo

 

Families are precious

The 15th of May is International Day of Families.

Sometimes, if one comes from a big household, it is easy to think that families can be a bit of a pain and actually lose sight of how incredibly lucky we are to have them. Many people are very sad because they either don’t have family or they have moved far away and they never get to see them.

If you have not spoken to a  family member whom you love dearly for a while…  why not pick up your cell phone and send them a WhatsApp or sms to tell them that you are thinking of them (or even better – call them) or write a letter. You could even make plans to go and visit them.

Don’t take people for granted. You never know when something might happen and you’ll never see them again.

Talking about families, the 14th of May is Mother’s Day.  Yup – that’s this Sunday. Still time to do something if you have forgotten about it.

Our Mothers really are special people. They do loads of stuff that we just expect and half the time never even bother to thank them for it. They are always there for us and sacrifice plenty for their kids and families that we never even think about.

If you are a tad financially challenged and don’t have money to buy your mum something special, you could make her a card and give her some special vouchers. Things that say you’ll “wash the dishes” or “make her a cup of tea or coffee” or “sweep or vacuum” or do something else that helps her out… then she can hand you a voucher at a later stage and you will do the chore with a smile on your face and no whinging!

Seriously – mums very much appreciate things like this.

It’s the little things that have to be done day in and day out that get really tiresome. And while you are about it – you could keep your room neat for a change, pick up any stuff that you leave lying around the house without her having to ask and nag.

Give her a fat hug too and tell her that you love her and appreciate her. You don’t have to wait for Mother’s Day to do this either!

To all the mums out there – we love and salute you. Thank you for everything.

Sibo

Random Acts of Kindness

I’ve been reading things about kindness lately and I was thinking that we sure could use a little more of that stuff in our world to make it a better place.  It usually only takes one person to start a domino effect.

It’s not hard to be kind – but it does take a certain mind-set. You can start small. By smiling – and we all know that it takes only 26 to smile and 62 to frown!

Smile at random people for no reason at all.  Usually 9 times out of 10 (unless that person is having a really bad day) they will smile back at you. And then you both feel good.

It’s contagious. You walk along thinking about the person who smiled at you and usually you are still smiling. So you end up smiling at somebody else too … and so it goes.

Of course, remember – it’s okay to smile at random people but kids should not stop and chat. And if anybody ever gets too friendly and makes you feel uncomfortable – feel free to tell your parental agent.

If you are at home, or in a shop and somebody drops something. You can bend down and pick it up for them. It takes just a little bit of effort.

You can offer to help your mum or dad without being asked. They might fall over and faint – but try it sometime – I bet they would really appreciate it.

Or maybe if you see somebody at school sitting by themselves looking all sad and lonely you could go and sit with them – even offer them a snack out of your lunch box if you have enough to share.

This is going to sound a little crazy but engaging in acts of kindness actually acts a bit like a medicine chest in your body…

Did you know, it is said that kindness stimulates the production of serotonin. This is a chemical that not only makes you feel-good but it makes you happy and calms you down.

Even better – doing acts of kindness produces endorphins—the brain’s natural painkiller!

They say that people who are always kind have 23% less cortisol (the stress hormone) and don’t get as old as quickly as the average population.

Research has even found that being kind lowers blood pressure.

Go out people and commit random acts of kindness!

Lots of love,

Sibo

Pledge a Book Please!

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.

Let’s make this happen. Please! Pledge now.

A million thanks

Sibo

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!

Letters… and not the alphabet ones either!

Sibo gets a letter

When last did you get a letter? A real letter! Not a window envelope from the bank or an bill that needs to be paid.

Unless you received some Christmas cards in the post, I bet you can’t even begin to remember.

The art of letter writing has gotten lost in this modern day society. Very few people write letters these days. Email is so much quicker and easier. More environmentally friendly too I suppose.

Kids don’t even write notes to each other and pass them under the desk anymore because they rather WhatsApp each other or use some other form of social media.

People would get love letters. They were things that you could read and re-read even when they got so crumpled that you could hardly read the writing anymore and the paper was falling to pieces. My gran still has letters that my grandpa wrote her a million years ago.

Of course, once you write something you can’t take it back. No matter how badly you want to. Although that still applies today – if you write a message on your cell phone or on some other social medial – you cannot take it back. Sure, you can delete things, but once you have read something – you cannot un-read it… so be nice with your words people!

Most people claim that the Post Office does not work very well anymore – but honestly – that isn’t exactly true. They do actually get pieces of post from A to B. My friend Ginny uses the Post Office all the time. Last year she posted her mum a birthday card – from Pretoria to Cape Town – regular mail. It was a really fancy one that she had specially made and was quite thick. She wondered if maybe somebody might think there was something interesting inside the envelope and if it would reach its destination or not.

But guess what. It did. Just a few days after she posted it too!

Sometimes it is a bit frustrating to stand in line at the Post Office to buy stamps (and then find that they don’t have any) but they will always be able to put a sticker with the right amount on your envelope if you have the letter with you.

Go on people – write a letter to somebody. I can guarantee that you will make their day!

Sibo

Smile and wave!

Miss Ball and Sibo

Our teacher, Mrs Ball, gave us a teensy tip in class the other day.

She said we should smile and wave when cars stop to let us cross the road at the zebra crossing. She was specifically talking about the one outside our school – but then she said that any old zebra crossing would do.

We all looked at her.

Why?

Cars are supposed to stop at a zebra crossing to let people go safely across the road. But they often don’t. In fact, they speed up and zoom over it without even looking.

Wayne piped up that this really was true. He nearly got squished as flat as a pancake last week – expecting somebody to stop and they didn’t.

But Mrs Ball stood her ground. When somebody has the courtesy to stop and let you cross the road safely – it costs you nothing to look the person in the eye, smile and wave thank you. It’s a nice, kind gesture.

She reckons the world is often sorely lacking in basic human kindness.

People are so caught up in their own lives, with their own problems that they have forgotten how to be nice – for no reason at all.

That reminded me of the little smiling experiment I did at the mall a few months ago. I remembered that had worked too. When I smiled at other people – most of them smiled back at me. It also made me feel good. Plus I noticed that many of the people carried on walking down the mall, still smiling.

We had the chance to try out her idea later that day. A few of us were waiting in a group at the zebra crossing. A car coasted to a complete halt and let us all walk across.

I looked up, smiled and waved. Some of my classmates were also in the group. They did the same thing.

The people in the car smiled and waved back. They only carried on driving after we were all on the other side of the road.

Some kids that were also crossing (who’re not in our class) asked why we were waving and smiling at strange people. I explained to them what Mrs Ball had said to us.

They had just seen what a positive reaction we had received and agreed that it was a good idea.

Smile awhile!

Sibo

Your new word for the week:

Word:  gesture

Meaning:  movement or sign

Example… Smiling and waving when you cross at a zebra crossing is a nice gesture.

Mind your manners!

The other day mum and I had been shopping in the mall. I was tired, my feet were sore and actually I was a bit fed up watching her try on gajillions of clothes.

Mum suggested that we stop for a break and a bite to eat. I wanted to go to McDonalds. Mum wanted to go to another little tea shop.

Obviously, because I’m the small one and mum has the money – we ended up going to Mum’s place.

I was not very happy and started to pout.

Look said mum, they have chocolate cake and milkshakes. I did not want chocolate cake or a milkshake. I wanted a cheese burger and a coke.

I was really miffed. I plonked down at that table and sulked. When the waitress came to take our order I did not look at her, nor did I say please or thank you.

Mum said I’d been really rude.

Really rude? Me? I didn’t think so.

But mum insisted. She said just because I was having a bad day I should not take it out on other people. They were just doing their job.

“Please and thank you are the cornerstones of politeness”, she said. And a smile does not hurt either.

Mum went off to find the Ladies room and left me sitting there – thinking.

Hmmm… probably I had been a bit rude hey? Come to think of it – I was not very proud of myself. I don’t ever like it when people think they can be rude to me, just because I’m a little kid. I guess it works both ways. One can’t just be bad tempered and mean when we don’t get our own way.

Even if it is something important like going to McDonalds!

Sibo 5In fact you could say that my behaviour had been downright dodgy.  The next time I saw the waitress passing our table I smiled at her and said I was sorry for being rude.

She patted my shoulder and said it was okay. She thanked me for apologising and said she also found it tiring going shopping with her mum.

I said sorry to  mum when she came back to the table.

The chocolate cake was delicious.

……………………..

Cool word for the week:

Word:  nook

Meaning:  a corner or a small recess

Example: Sibo and her mum found a nice little nook in the restaurant and sat down to have a snack.