Showing posts with label Scattergories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scattergories. Show all posts

Tuesday, 24 March 2026

WELCOME TO LONDON, THE GREAT CUMBERLAND HOTEL

Today, The Morgans & The Grandma have just arrived to London to stay some weeks in the English capital.
They are staying at the Cumberland Hotel, an important place for recent British history that joins London with Sant Boi and Barcelona, and England with Catalonia.

The family has been studying how to compose new nouns using infinitives and -ing or -er, and they have been talking about the origin of the name of Sant Boi.

They have started a new reading and have worked with the W- Pronouns to extract the most important information: Who? What? Where? When? 

More information: Gerunds as Nouns

More information: The Article A/An

Download Scattergories

Great Cumberland Place is a street in the City of Westminster, part of Greater London, England. There is also a hotel bearing the same name on the street.

The street runs from Oxford Street at Marble Arch to George Street at Bryanston Square.

It contains the Western Marble Arch Synagogue, near which stands a statue of Raoul Wallenberg.

Great Cumberland Place is home to The Cumberland Hotel.

The street was the home of Thomas Pinckney while he was the United States ambassador to the Court of St James's.

Sir James Mackintosh lived in Great Cumberland Street, which was later re-numbered as part of Great Cumberland Place.

The residents listed in 1833 were: "Hans Busk, Esq.; Sir Clifford Constable; Sir Frederick Hamilton; Lady C. Underwood; Sir G. Ivison Tapps; Baron Bülow (the Prussian Minister); General Sir R. M'Farlane; Leonard Currie, Esq.; Sir S. B. Fludyer, Bart.; Lady Trollope; Earl of Leitrim; Sir Alexander Johnston; and the Hon. and Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Norwich", and in Great Cumberland Street "Lord Saltoun; Mrs. Portman; John Wells, Esq.; Colonel Sherwood; Captain Richard Manby; John Lodge, Esq.; Major Murray; Robert Cutlar Fergusson, Esq.; John N. McLeod, Esq.; and Lord Bagot".

The explorers James Theodore Bent and Mabel Bent lived first at Number 43 and then Number 13 Great Cumberland Place from the early 1880s until Mabel Bent's death in 1929.

More information: The Cumberland Hotel

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874-24 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. 

Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.

Of mixed English and American parentage, Churchill was born in Oxfordshire to the wealthy Spencer aristocratic family. He joined the British Army in 1895 and saw action in British India, the Anglo-Sudan War, and the Second Boer War, later gaining fame as a war correspondent and writing books about his campaigns. Elected a Conservative MP in 1900, he defected to the Liberals in 1904. In H. H. Asquith's Liberal government, Churchill served as President of the Board of Trade and Home Secretary, championing prison reform and workers' social security.

As First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War, he oversaw the Gallipoli Campaign but, after it proved a disaster, he was demoted to Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He resigned in November 1915 and joined the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front for six months.

In 1917, he returned to government under David Lloyd George and served successively as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, and Secretary of State for the Colonies, overseeing the Anglo-Irish Treaty and British foreign policy in the Middle East. After two years out of Parliament, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government, returning the pound sterling in 1925 to the gold standard at its pre-war parity, a move widely seen as creating deflationary pressure and depressing the UK economy.

Out of government during his so-called wilderness years in the 1930s, Churchill took the lead in calling for British rearmament to counter the growing threat of militarism in Nazi Germany

At the outbreak of the Second World War he was re-appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. In May 1940, he became Prime Minister, succeeding Neville Chamberlain.

Churchill formed a national government and oversaw British involvement in the Allied war effort against the Axis powers, resulting in victory in 1945. After the Conservatives' defeat in the 1945 general election, he became Leader of the Opposition. Amid the developing Cold War with the Soviet Union, he publicly warned of an iron curtain of Soviet influence in Europe and promoted European unity. Between his terms as Prime Minister, he wrote several books recounting his experience during the war. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.

He lost the 1950 election, but was returned to office in 1951. His second term was preoccupied with foreign affairs, especially Anglo-American relations and preservation of what remained of the British Empire with India now no longer part of it. Domestically, his government emphasised housebuilding and completed the development of a nuclear weapon (begun by his predecessor). 

In declining health, Churchill resigned as Prime Minister in 1955, remaining an MP until 1964. Upon his death in 1965, he was given a state funeral.

Widely considered one of the 20th century's most significant figures, Churchill remains popular in the Anglosphere, where he is seen as a victorious wartime leader who played an important role in defending Europe's liberal democracy against the spread of fascism; historians often rank Churchill as the greatest prime minister. His second term received more mixed responses, and he is criticized for some wartime events and also for his imperialist views.

More information: Winston Churchill

 

 I do not at all underrate the severity of the ordeal
which lies before us;
but I believe our countrymen will show themselves
capable of standing up to it,
like the brave men of Barcelona,
and will be able to stand up to it,
and carry on in spite of it,
at least as well as any other people in the world.

Winston Churchill

Wednesday, 22 January 2025

THE WINSORS IN LONDON, KEEP CALM AND LEARN A LOT!

Today, The Winsors & The Grandma have just arrived to London to stay some weeks in the English capital.
They are staying at Cumberland Hotel, an important place for recent British history that joins London with Sant Boi and Barcelona, and England with Catalonia.

Keep calm and learn a lot, Winsors!

The family has been studying how to compose new nouns using infinitives and -ing or -er, the Article A/An, the Adjectives and, the Imperative. 

Finally, they have been talking about the origin of the name of Sant Boi and they have helped Mima Winsor, who has been arrested at London City Airport while she was protesting in a favour of Maori people.

More information: A/An Article

 More information: Imperative I & II

More information: Gerunds as Nouns

Download Scattergories

Play Password

Great Cumberland Place is a street in the City of Westminster, part of Greater London, England. There is also a hotel bearing the same name on the street.

The street runs from Oxford Street at Marble Arch to George Street at Bryanston Square.

It contains the Western Marble Arch Synagogue, near which stands a statue of Raoul Wallenberg.

Great Cumberland Place is home to The Cumberland Hotel.

The street was the home of Thomas Pinckney while he was the United States ambassador to the Court of St James's.

Sir James Mackintosh lived in Great Cumberland Street, which was later re-numbered as part of Great Cumberland Place.

The residents listed in 1833 were: "Hans Busk, Esq.; Sir Clifford Constable; Sir Frederick Hamilton; Lady C. Underwood; Sir G. Ivison Tapps; Baron Bülow (the Prussian Minister); General Sir R. M'Farlane; Leonard Currie, Esq.; Sir S. B. Fludyer, Bart.; Lady Trollope; Earl of Leitrim; Sir Alexander Johnston; and the Hon. and Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Norwich", and in Great Cumberland Street "Lord Saltoun; Mrs. Portman; John Wells, Esq.; Colonel Sherwood; Captain Richard Manby; John Lodge, Esq.; Major Murray; Robert Cutlar Fergusson, Esq.; John N. McLeod, Esq.; and Lord Bagot".

The explorers James Theodore Bent and Mabel Bent lived first at Number 43 and then Number 13 Great Cumberland Place from the early 1880s until Mabel Bent's death in 1929.

More information: The Cumberland Hotel

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874-24 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. 

Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.

Of mixed English and American parentage, Churchill was born in Oxfordshire to the wealthy Spencer aristocratic family. He joined the British Army in 1895 and saw action in British India, the Anglo-Sudan War, and the Second Boer War, later gaining fame as a war correspondent and writing books about his campaigns. Elected a Conservative MP in 1900, he defected to the Liberals in 1904. In H. H. Asquith's Liberal government, Churchill served as President of the Board of Trade and Home Secretary, championing prison reform and workers' social security.

As First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War, he oversaw the Gallipoli Campaign but, after it proved a disaster, he was demoted to Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He resigned in November 1915 and joined the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front for six months.

In 1917, he returned to government under David Lloyd George and served successively as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, and Secretary of State for the Colonies, overseeing the Anglo-Irish Treaty and British foreign policy in the Middle East. After two years out of Parliament, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government, returning the pound sterling in 1925 to the gold standard at its pre-war parity, a move widely seen as creating deflationary pressure and depressing the UK economy.

Out of government during his so-called wilderness years in the 1930s, Churchill took the lead in calling for British rearmament to counter the growing threat of militarism in Nazi Germany

At the outbreak of the Second World War he was re-appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. In May 1940, he became Prime Minister, succeeding Neville Chamberlain.

Churchill formed a national government and oversaw British involvement in the Allied war effort against the Axis powers, resulting in victory in 1945. After the Conservatives' defeat in the 1945 general election, he became Leader of the Opposition. Amid the developing Cold War with the Soviet Union, he publicly warned of an iron curtain of Soviet influence in Europe and promoted European unity. Between his terms as Prime Minister, he wrote several books recounting his experience during the war. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.

He lost the 1950 election, but was returned to office in 1951. His second term was preoccupied with foreign affairs, especially Anglo-American relations and preservation of what remained of the British Empire with India now no longer part of it. Domestically, his government emphasised housebuilding and completed the development of a nuclear weapon (begun by his predecessor). 

In declining health, Churchill resigned as Prime Minister in 1955, remaining an MP until 1964. Upon his death in 1965, he was given a state funeral.

Widely considered one of the 20th century's most significant figures, Churchill remains popular in the Anglosphere, where he is seen as a victorious wartime leader who played an important role in defending Europe's liberal democracy against the spread of fascism; historians often rank Churchill as the greatest prime minister. His second term received more mixed responses, and he is criticized for some wartime events and also for his imperialist views.

More information: Winston Churchill

 I do not at all underrate the severity of the ordeal
which lies before us;
but I believe our countrymen will show themselves
capable of standing up to it,
like the brave men of Barcelona,
and will be able to stand up to it,
and carry on in spite of it,
at least as well as any other people in the world.

Winston Churchill

Thursday, 1 February 2024

WELCOME TO LONDON, THE GREAT CUMBERLAND HOTEL

Today, The Fosters & The Grandma have just arrived to London to stay some weeks in the English capital. They are staying at the Cumberland Hotel, an important place for recent British history that joins London with Sant Boi and Barcelona, and England with Catalonia.

Keep calm and carry on, Fosters!

The family has been studying how to compose new nouns using infinitives and -ing or -er, and they have been talking about the origin of the name of Sant Boi.

More information: Gerunds as Nouns

Download Nationalities

Download Scattergories

Great Cumberland Place is a street in the City of Westminster, part of Greater London, England. There is also a hotel bearing the same name on the street.

The street runs from Oxford Street at Marble Arch to George Street at Bryanston Square.

It contains the Western Marble Arch Synagogue, near which stands a statue of Raoul Wallenberg.

Great Cumberland Place is home to The Cumberland Hotel.

The street was the home of Thomas Pinckney while he was the United States ambassador to the Court of St James's.

Sir James Mackintosh lived in Great Cumberland Street, which was later re-numbered as part of Great Cumberland Place.

The residents listed in 1833 were: "Hans Busk, Esq.; Sir Clifford Constable; Sir Frederick Hamilton; Lady C. Underwood; Sir G. Ivison Tapps; Baron Bülow (the Prussian Minister); General Sir R. M'Farlane; Leonard Currie, Esq.; Sir S. B. Fludyer, Bart.; Lady Trollope; Earl of Leitrim; Sir Alexander Johnston; and the Hon. and Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Norwich", and in Great Cumberland Street "Lord Saltoun; Mrs. Portman; John Wells, Esq.; Colonel Sherwood; Captain Richard Manby; John Lodge, Esq.; Major Murray; Robert Cutlar Fergusson, Esq.; John N. McLeod, Esq.; and Lord Bagot".

The explorers James Theodore Bent and Mabel Bent lived first at Number 43 and then Number 13 Great Cumberland Place from the early 1880s until Mabel Bent's death in 1929.

More information: The Cumberland Hotel

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874-24 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. 

Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.

Of mixed English and American parentage, Churchill was born in Oxfordshire to the wealthy Spencer aristocratic family. He joined the British Army in 1895 and saw action in British India, the Anglo-Sudan War, and the Second Boer War, later gaining fame as a war correspondent and writing books about his campaigns. Elected a Conservative MP in 1900, he defected to the Liberals in 1904. In H. H. Asquith's Liberal government, Churchill served as President of the Board of Trade and Home Secretary, championing prison reform and workers' social security.

As First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War, he oversaw the Gallipoli Campaign but, after it proved a disaster, he was demoted to Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He resigned in November 1915 and joined the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front for six months.

In 1917, he returned to government under David Lloyd George and served successively as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, and Secretary of State for the Colonies, overseeing the Anglo-Irish Treaty and British foreign policy in the Middle East. After two years out of Parliament, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government, returning the pound sterling in 1925 to the gold standard at its pre-war parity, a move widely seen as creating deflationary pressure and depressing the UK economy.

Out of government during his so-called wilderness years in the 1930s, Churchill took the lead in calling for British rearmament to counter the growing threat of militarism in Nazi Germany

At the outbreak of the Second World War he was re-appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. In May 1940, he became Prime Minister, succeeding Neville Chamberlain.

Churchill formed a national government and oversaw British involvement in the Allied war effort against the Axis powers, resulting in victory in 1945. After the Conservatives' defeat in the 1945 general election, he became Leader of the Opposition. Amid the developing Cold War with the Soviet Union, he publicly warned of an iron curtain of Soviet influence in Europe and promoted European unity. Between his terms as Prime Minister, he wrote several books recounting his experience during the war. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.

He lost the 1950 election, but was returned to office in 1951. His second term was preoccupied with foreign affairs, especially Anglo-American relations and preservation of what remained of the British Empire with India now no longer part of it. Domestically, his government emphasised housebuilding and completed the development of a nuclear weapon (begun by his predecessor). 

In declining health, Churchill resigned as Prime Minister in 1955, remaining an MP until 1964. Upon his death in 1965, he was given a state funeral.

Widely considered one of the 20th century's most significant figures, Churchill remains popular in the Anglosphere, where he is seen as a victorious wartime leader who played an important role in defending Europe's liberal democracy against the spread of fascism; historians often rank Churchill as the greatest prime minister. His second term received more mixed responses, and he is criticized for some wartime events and also for his imperialist views.

More information: Winston Churchill

 I do not at all underrate the severity of the ordeal
which lies before us;
but I believe our countrymen will show themselves
capable of standing up to it,
like the brave men of Barcelona,
and will be able to stand up to it,
and carry on in spite of it,
at least as well as any other people in the world.

Winston Churchill

Tuesday, 8 November 2022

SCATTERGORIES, THE CREATIVE-THINKING PARTY GAME

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Scattergories, one of the most popular party games.

Scattergories is a creative-thinking category-based party game originally published by Parker Brothers in 1988.

Parker Brothers was purchased by Hasbro a few years later, which published the game internationally under its Milton Bradley brand. 

The objective of the 2-to-6-player game is to score points by uniquely naming objects within a set of categories, given an initial letter, within a time limit. The game is based on a traditional game called Categories.

More information: Icebreaker Ideas

The game is played in sets of 3 rounds.

-Each player takes a folder with an answering pad and 3 category cards. Each sheet in the answering pad has three columns of 12 blank lines. In addition, the category cards have 4 lists, each with 12 unique categories, for a total of 144 categories in the game. In new versions of the game, each card has 2 lists of 12 unique categories, for a total of 16 lists and 192 categories. All players must agree on the list to use.

-One player rolls a 20-sided letter die to determine the first letter used. The timer is set for up to three minutes.

-One player starts the timer. In the time allotted, each player must attempt to think of and write down, in the first column on the pad, a word or term that fits each of the 12 categories and starts with the rolled letter. Any number of words in the answer is allowed, as long as the first word starts with the correct letter. For example, with a category of vegetable and a letter of C, words such as cauliflower, carrot and collard greens are acceptable, but broccoli is not (wrong initial letter), nor is citrus (wrong category). Alliteration is encouraged with proper nouns in one game variation; Ronald Reagan is worth 2 points, and Hubert Horatio Humphrey is worth 3.

-Writing a bad answer is still better than no answer though because there is always the possibility that the group playing will accept the answer. For example, citrus is vegetable in the sense referring to the entire plant kingdom, i.e. neither animal nor mineral.

-All players stop writing when the timer is finished. Following the list, each player, in turn, reads their answer for each category. Players score zero points for an answer that duplicates another answer in that round, and one point for an answer no other player has given. You cannot have more than one answer on a line for each number. Acceptable answers that are proper nouns using alliteration score one point for each word using the letter.

-If for some reason a player thinks someone's answer does not fit the category (for instance, knuckle for the category types of sandwich) a player may challenge that answer. When challenged, all players vote on the validity of that answer. If the vote is a tie, the vote of the player who is being challenged is thrown out.

-The die is rolled again (and re-rolled if the same letter as the previous round is duplicated), and the second round starts.

-In the case of proper nouns, all parts of the answer will be counted as adequate provided one begins with the letter in play. For example, in the case of U.S. Presidents using the letter S, an acceptable answer would be Harry S. Truman, as his middle name is the letter S. Martin Sheen, however, was never a U.S. President, and therefore is not a valid answer, rewarding zero points. Note: This rule does not apply to book titles, such as The Old Man and the Sea.

-In the case of general categories, broad interpretation is allowed for fun and creative game play. For example, in the case of things commonly found in the kitchen that start with the letter K, both knife (a kitchen tool) and kelp (a type of food that is commonly cooked in kitchens around the world) are acceptable answers.

Scattergories was released to the iTunes App Store in 2015. The game was developed by Magmic and licensed through Hasbro.

More information: Scattergories Online


Playing games can contribute to making you happy,
perhaps even without therapy.

Gyles Brandreth

Tuesday, 2 February 2016

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS

Antoni Gaudí
Today, The Holmes have reviewed Past Simple and have finished the first chapter of Charles Dickens' A Carol Christmas.

More information: Past Simple Exercises

After, they’ve been talking about Antoni Gaudí and his influence in Sant Boi de Llobregat, Santa Coloma de Cervelló and Palma. The universal architect based lots of his works in number phi, the golden ratio.


Next, the family has played to Scattergories and has talked about art works describing them.


Originality consists of returning to the origin.
Thus, originality means returning, through one's resources,
to the simplicity of the early solutions.

 Antoni Gaudí

Thursday, 14 January 2016

MAJORCA ISLAND & LUISA'S RESCUE PLAN

Ramon Llull
This Wednesday, The Holmes have had an intensive day.

First, they’ve listened to The Grandma who has talked about the importance of Majorca Island in the Middle-age paying attention to Ramon Llull, Arnau de Vilanova and Abraham Cresques.

Second, they’ve read a new chapter of Oscar Wilde’s The Ghost of Canterbury.

Next, they’ve practised about how to resume a long story and create a plot using the most important information: Who? What? Where? When?

Then, they’ve worked in a rescue plan for Luisa choosing the best options; leaving the worst ones and, the most important, thinking in the inconvenient, dangers and possible problems to avoid all of them and be successful. They must have used some different kind of transport.
  
After that, some members of the family have done some exercises about Present Simple and Social English.

Finally, The Holmes have played together. Scattergories has been the chosen game.


What you don't see with your eyes, 
don't invent with your mouth.

 Jewish Proverb