Here are a list of potential themes I came up with:
Idea 1 - Art
The arts are widely viewed as less important than other educational subjects such as maths and science in today's society but there have been many studies into the benefits of encouraging creativity in children. Therefore one idea was to do a fun series on arts related themes such as crazy facts about artists and their work.
Here are the most interesting facts I found to potentially include on the cards:
1) Picasso has 23 words in his name! Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso.
2) ‘Art’ used to be an Olympic sport. Artists were award gold, silver and bronze medals for architecture, painting, sculpture, music and literature across multiple Summer Olympics in the early 20th Century.
3) Picasso's first word was pencil and he could draw before he could walk
4) In the Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. This was the fashion in Renaissance Florence to shave them off.
5)Salvador Dali sought to never explain his own work, however he has said that the idea for his iconic melting clocks came from chunks of Camembert cheese he observed melting in the sun—although he may have been joking.
6) The longest painting by an individual measured 3,444.91 m
After reviewing these facts and failing to find any large amount of interesting fun facts online I have decided against using art as a theme as younger children would have no idea, and no real interest in learning about who Picasso, Salvador Dali or LEonardo da Vinci is and there wasn't much scope for differentiation. It's more of a sophisticated theme for older age groups as it focusses more on art history.
Idea 2 - Anatomy / The Body
One interesting and unique theme that hadn't been looked into previously was the human body. I found loads of amazing facts that had lots of potential to be made into eye catching and visually engaging cards:
1) We have the same amount of hairs on our body as a chimpanzee. Most are useless and so fine that they are invisible.
2) With the 60,000 miles of blood vessels inside the average human body, you could circumnavigate Earth two and a half times.
3) The human eye is so sensitive that if the Earth were flat, you could spot a candle flickering at night from up to 30 miles away.
4) When you blush, the lining of your stomach blushes too.
5) Inside your belly button are thousands of bacteria that form an ecosystem the size of an entire rainforest.
6) We humans are the best long-distance runners on the planet. Better than any four-legged animal. In fact, thousands of years ago we used to run after our prey until they died of exhaustion.
7) A full head of human hair is strong enough to support 12 tonnes.
8) In 30 minutes, the human body gives off enough heat to bring a gallon of water to the boil
9) Humans share 50% of their DNA with bananas.
10) Humans are bioluminescent and glow in the dark. The light that we emit is 1,000 times weaker than our human eyes are able to pick up.
11) Humans shed 40 pounds of skin in their lifetime, completely replacing their outer skin every month.
12) Around 90% of the cells that make humans aren't “human" in origin. We're mostly fungi and bacteria.
13) A condition called synesthesia can cause senses to overlap. In other words, some people can taste words or hear colors.
15) Humans shed about 600,000 particles of skin every hour.
16) A human baby has over 60 more bones than an adult.
17) An average person produces about 25,000 quarts of saliva in a lifetime, enough to fill two swimming pools.
18) We all have tiny mights living in our eyelashes.
19) Your ears and nose never stop growing.
20) Everyone has a unique tongue print
21) Your taste buds are replaced every 10 days.
Idea 3 - Weather
With climate change being a huge global issue for both our generation and the next I thought weather would be both a fun, interesting and informative theme to base the facts on. These are facts I found:
1) You can tell the temperature by counting a cricket's chirps!
2) Sandstorms can swallow up entire cities.
3) A mudslide can carry rocks, trees, vehicles and entire buildings!
4) A heatwave can make train tracks bend!
5) About 2,000 thunderstorms rain down on Earth every minute.
6) In July 2001 the rainfall in Kerala, India, was blood red!
7) Wildfires sometimes create tornadoes made of fire called fire whirls.
8) Waterspouts, or rotating columns of air over water, can make sea creatures rain down from the sky.
9) The most damage ever caused by a thunderstorm was in 1995, when hailstones bigger than cricket balls fell in Texas, USA.
10) You can use pine cones to forecast the weather: The scales will close when rain is on the way.
After reviewing all the facts and asking a number of my peers which they found the most interesting I decided to go with human anatomy as the theme. There were lots of valid points made on which would be the best subject. One piece of advice was that children of this age aren't really self aware therefore human anatomy may not be appropriate, whereas things you can actually see like weather you find amazing as a child. However a lot of the facts on anatomy were very visual and about things you could actually see, making them fun, engaging and appropriate.
After reviewing all the facts and asking a number of my peers which they found the most interesting I decided to go with human anatomy as the theme. There were lots of valid points made on which would be the best subject. One piece of advice was that children of this age aren't really self aware therefore human anatomy may not be appropriate, whereas things you can actually see like weather you find amazing as a child. However a lot of the facts on anatomy were very visual and about things you could actually see, making them fun, engaging and appropriate.
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