Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 520
Sleep Time
Hello Everyone
Are you one of those children who never wants to go to bed when your parents say it is time to go?
lf, you say yes, then you are probably like most other children.
But sleep is very important to us.
lt is a time when we rest our bodies, and very importantly our minds as well.
Scientists continue to study the brain because there is so much they do not understand about it still.
People can miraculously acquire a new talent like being able to play the piano when they could not before when they have sustained a head injury. Somehow their brain has changed. Sometimes people can lose their memory but don’t forget language. They don’t know the members of their family, but still remember how to talk.
Very often, older people can remember lots of things about when they were young but not what they have done recently. This is called long-term memory and short-term memory.
lt is a well-known fact that London taxi drivers who have to learn the map of London off-by-heart and should know very street and route in this very large area have an unusually large hippocampus, which is the part of the brain responsible for memory.
And scientists have also found that in autumn, squirrels have an increase in the size of their hippocampus on average by about 15% because they need to get busy collecting and caching nuts while lots are available. They bury the nuts to store them – and then need to remember where the nuts are so they can eat them later.
What we are really sure of, is that the brain needs sleep to remain healthy.
And women usually need more sleep than men because they have more complex brains.
(When boy babies are forming before they are born, 80% of their brain cells pertaining to emotion are killed by a hormone called testosterone.
This means women have 400% more brain cells relating to emotion than men, and sometimes when women get upset, men cannot understand why they are getting upset, because they do not see things in the same way – and that is why women have to explain things to men in a very straight forward way so that they can understand what they are thinking).
People have gone without sleep for a very long time in experiments where scientists have observed what happened to them, and others have gone without sleep to try and raise money for charity.
The results have sometimes been that their health was badly affected for a long time afterwards.
During sleep, toxins are removed from the brain.
Our brains really need to get several hours sleep each night. Most people need seven to eight.
lf we don’t get enough, we really won’t function properly. And this is especially important during stressful periods of our lives – like taking examinations or when we are working hard on a project.
The hours we sleep before midnight seem to be more valuable than those afterwards too. So going to bed very late, especially for children, is not a good idea either.
(Although there are different chronotypes – people who like to go to bed late and people who like to get up early. Scientists think this occurs because in ancient times when tribes had lookouts watching out for attack, it was useful for some people to be alert at the beginning of the night and some to be alert at the end of the night.)
ln Blog Post 463, l explained to you how a large part of your brain function is in your subconscious.
l told you about how it is the part of the brain that keeps your heart beating and your lungs breathing whether you are awake or asleep without you even thinking about it.
The subconscious can do all sorts of things. Some of them are very useful and some are more difficult to live with; for example it can make you fearful of things that are not really dangerous to you, or upset about things that are really quite imagined.
But you can purposefully use the subconscious for something really useful.
The subconscious can be very useful in problem solving.
You need to give your brain a problem or decision to work on in a very gentle, non-forced way and it can work on the problem once given time to do it.
(Have you ever tried to remember a name or word and just couldn’t – but a little while later, after you have stopped straining to think of it, it just pops into your head?)
Just let the question roll around your brain without thinking too much about it for a while, and something useful could just pop out!
Sometimes people want a whole day or even more to come to a decision. Some people say three days is the perfect time to spend on making a big decision – or 72 hours.
Sometimes people call this sleeping on a decision. They say, “l will sleep on it.”
Another name for this – is dream incubation.
Many knotty problems have been solved, story lines for novels and lyrics for songs have been formulated and new inventions have been produced during sleep!
lf you are lucky, you just wake up knowing what to do.
Putting the hole at the pointed end of the needle on a sewing machine was an idea that came to the inventor, Elias Howe, while he was asleep. You will notice the hole in a hand-sewing needle is at the other end and this just wasn’t working on a sewing machine – another way had to be thought of.
There are many examples of inventions that have come out of dreams.
ln Ancient Greece, when people were ill, they were taken to temples in the mountains and whilst they were in those holy places, they tried to find cures for themselves while they were asleep.
They wanted to know which herbs and plants would yield medicine that would cure their ills.
How can you know something that you have never learnt about?
How can you know about something that nobody else has ever invented or discovered?
They were trying to access the ‘super-conscious’ part of the brain.
lt is said that this is the part of the brain that gives you information from the Universe/God/The Creator/your spirit – information that is true but that you have never learnt about before.
The patients would hope to dream about foods they should eat or stop eating or maybe herbs they should take as a medicine.
Eating different foods can still help people today to cure or alleviate (help) illnesses like arthritis and epileptic fits.
And dream incubation has been used down through the ages to discover different ideas and solutions.
So how do you use dream incubation?
There are two steps to take.
The first thing to do is to get into the habit of remembering your dreams.
Some dreams are just about things you have seen during the previous day, or they are your brain throwing out rubbish it doesn’t need anymore – like a computer processing or deleting files.
But some dreams are very clear and full of useful information. Some dreams keep telling you that what you are believing with the logical, thinking part of your brain is the opposite of the Truth.
When you can get into the habit of remembering your dreams – before they evaporate and disappear on waking, you can go onto step two.
Write down your question on a piece of paper before you go to bed.
Look at it and think about it. Set a clear intention. Fall asleep thinking about your question but don’t get stressed or up-tight about the process.
lf you don’t wake up with an answer that appeals to a deep knowing inside yourself the next day, try again the next night.
After trying this for 7-10 days without any results, it probably isn’t going to work.
But that doesn’t mean to say that you can’t try dream incubation again another time with another question that you want answered. The more your practise the process, the better you will get at it.
You might want to do some more research on a problem, and when you have learnt about several options, allow your subconscious to choose/feel/decide which is the right path the take.
There are some people in the world, like some Tibetan monks, who can control their dreams. They are specially trained to do this. But it is not good for your brain, unless you really know what you are doing.
But there are other useful ways you can use dream incubation. You can also imagine yourself well if you have an illness as you are going to sleep and get the subconscious to work on healing your body while you are asleep.
lt can do this.
Many people who have been told that they will never get better by doctors have recovered from an illness because they have set their mind to get better.
Some people try to do this while they are awake too by using meditation to tell their body to heal – via their brain.
The brain is a very, very powerful tool if you know how to use it to your advantage.
Use your superpowers wisely!
lf you like my blog, please support it by telling all your friends and followers about it.
Thank you!
And see you again next Fun Friday!
Love and kisses
Salty Sam
www.christina-sinclair.com
Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week
Bob: l ate a lot of liquorice last night before l went to bed and l had lots of weird nightmares.
Bill: What kind of dreams did you have?
Bob: All sorts.
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
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
The Rocky Bay Community Orchard needed a bit of tidying up this winter and there were plenty of volunteers to pitch in and help.
You need to tend to a lot of little jobs to make sure you end up with a harvest when you want your crops to grow well, and there are different things that need attending to at different times of the year.
In springtime the most important thing that has to happen in an orchard is pollination and without that, the fruits will not appear and grow over the summer to be picked in the autumn. Lots of different insects help to pollinate the blossom flowers, including honey bees.
You will remember that out community orchard is situated at the bottom of the vicarage garden. The vicar thought that it would be a good idea to put some bee hives in the orchard. Bees come and pollinate the fruit in the orchard, but he thought that if they came from hives that were more local, they would not have to fly so far to make their collections. That would mean that they could spend more time making honey and less time commuting to work!
The vicar has a young man living in his house now called Raymond, we all call him Ray, who wants to go to college and learn how to farm and look after animals. The vicar knew that Auntie Alice keeps bees and has increased the number of hives that she has in her garden over the past few years and wondered if she might be able to come and give bee-keeping lessons to Ray – and a few other people too so that they could set hives up in the orchard, tend to them and collect honey as well.
Auntie Alice was pleased to help. Ray is already helping out on the farm behind Rocky Bay that is owned by Farmer Jenkins. Farmer Jenkins is teaching him lots of things. Looking after domesticated animals is called animal husbandry and bees need looking after just as much as cows and goats; even though you don’t need to see to them on a daily basis. A lot of bee-keepers nowadays are older people and the bees really need young people to learn how to look after them too. There are even little bee-keepers’ suits available for children to wear.
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Quick Quiz
Draw a column of boxes 5 across and 9 down.
Each box will have a letter in.
Can you find the answers to these clues?
Write the words ‘sleep time’ down in the first column of boxes to get you started.
Column words
- they twinkle in the night sky
- relating to the Moon
- something given in addition
- the opposite to exit
- a little fairy folk person
- a measurement of weight
- the contents of a book
- something you use to buy things
- the opposite of late
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE A BAG FOR THE TOOTH FAlRY
If you ever leave your tooth out for the Tooth Fairy, you may need a little bag to put it in so that she will be able to know where to look.
There will be enough room in the bag to wrap the tooth up in a tissue first. The bag looks a bit like a tooth.
When baby teeth fall out, it does not hurt. They will get wobbly and eventually just lift out because a bigger tooth is growing underneath.
Nature will know what to do.
But it is your responsibility to clean your teeth twice a day and eat a good diet to keep your teeth strong and healthy.
The fairy pattern to accompany the bag is on Blog Post 396. You will need to attach a loop to her head if you want to hang her from your bedpost along with the bag.
BAG FOR THE TOOTH FAIRY BASE (KNIT ONE)
Using 4mm knitting needles and white dk yarn cast on 9 stitches
Slip 1 (knit 1, purl 1) knit the last 2 stitches to the end of the row
Repeat the last row 21 times
Cast off
BAG FOR THE TOOTH FAIRY SIDES (KNIT TWO)
Using 4mm knitting needles and white dk yarn cast on 9 stitches
Knit 18 rows of stocking stitch
Knit 4 rows of garter stitch
Knit 2 rows of stocking stitch
Knit 2 rows of garter stitch
Cast off
BAG FOR THE TOOTH FAIRY SIDES (KNIT TWO)
Using 4mm knitting needles and white dk yarn cast on 15 stitches
Knit 18 rows of stocking stitch
Knit 4 rows of garter stitch
Knit 2 rows of stocking stitch
Knit 2 rows of garter stitch
Cast off
CORDS (MAKE TWO)
Crochet 40 chains into a length of white yarn twice
TO MAKE UP
Using over-sew stitching and with right sides together sew the bottom of the sides to the base and then sew up the corners of the bag
Thread the cords along each side and knot them together at the ends
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
Quick Quiz Answers
Column words
- they twinkle in the night sky – stars
- relating to the Moon – lunar
- something given in addition – extra
- the opposite to exit – entry
- a little fairy folk person – pixie
- a measurement of weight – tonne
- the contents of a book – index
- something you use to buy things – money
- the opposite of late – early
