Little Ming and Little Fung suddenly burst in on Granma T who was dozing in front of the fire.

LM: Granma granma we' ve just been listening to the World News on the television outside the cafe. It said that the UK has had the wettest January and February since records began.

LF: There are pictures of floods all over England. Some in a place called Kent. And some around Cambridge.

LM: And York

LF: And in Glow cess shire I think that is what they said.

LM: There are 48 flood warning on rivers in Britain. Water is everywhere. Running into people's homes and businesses

LF: We've seen cars and vans stranded in what look like lakes and ponds.

LM: Their meadows and pastures are are now, just like ours - paddy fields.

LF: But animals are stranded and they say that all the crops are lost. Can this be true? Isn't water good for plants?

LM: One man was rowing out to rescue some sheep that were on some higher ground.

LF: People where actually going down the streets where they lived in small boats. Firemen were helping older people in and out of their windows.

LM: Some old people would not leave their houses - they said it was safer at home, they did not want to be burgled!

LF: Some children were trying to cycle through the floods in one village and getting the police there very very annoyed.

LM: There was one incredible picture - it showed a railway station but you could not see the train lines it looked just like the canal down by Huang Ti's hardware store.

LF: But you won't believe this Granma. If it is bad in the British Isles in Siberia it is worse, the temperature has fallen to MINUS fifty degrees.

LM: There the animals are dying and people are struggling to keep warm and burning their furniture.

LF: And, and in Antartica they have just found a salt water pond that does not freeze over at all!

LM: Phew, thank goodness our weather changes almost every twenty minutes.

GranmaT: When you two have finally FINISHED. GO and get ready for bed!

In the meantime..........

Children you might like to:

1. Complete the silhouettes of a watering can and of a man rescuing one of his sheep.
2. Investigate the difference between climate and weather.
3. Find how much rain fell during January and February where you live.
4. Talk to the older people in your family about weather before you were born. Do they think the weather is getting worse or improving overall?
5. Use the Internet to find out about the weather in Beijing or Kowloon or Xi'an.
6. Find out what happens when plants become water - logged.

Parents you might like to:

1. Consider the difference between the UK, England, Britain and the British Isles, just what do they all mean and why Little Ming and Fung could get confused.
2. Explore how big a topic of conversation the state of the weather really is. What are people concerned about?
3. Think about the weather where you live, list the many words used to describe it and then keep a record of the following month's weather.
4. Look at local, regional and national weather forecast and begin keeping a record to see how accurate they are.
5. Investigate the temperature scales - Centigrade, Fahrenheit and Absolute
6. Find out more about the proverbs and folklore associated with weather. e.g. red sky at night...

Teachers you might like to:

1. Explore how the weather and its associated images are used in literature.
2. Investigate local/ national weather statistics - discuss ways of recording that information as well as build upon the ideas of average and diversity. Use the Internet to explore weather statistics for your region/ locality. Can you indentify any trends? What changes can you spot?
3. Develop work on directed number by considering temperatures like those in Siberia of minus 50. How much warmer is it where you are?
4. Explore with a calculator the alogorithms used for converting degrees Centigrade to degrees Fahrenheit and vice versa.
5. Study the television and radio - to compare and contrast their styles of informing the public about the weather. Alternatively you might like to get the children to role play - being a weather presenter.