Subject Link Book 3 – Script

Chapter 1, Eyes

Lesson 1 Twice as Good!

Have you ever wondered why you have two eyes? The answer is simple! Having two eyes
helps you see things better. Here are some advantages of having two eyes.

With two eyes you get a wider view. Your left eye lets you see things on your left side.
With your right eye, you can see what is on your right side. But when you use both eyes,
these two views are combined. You can see almost twice as much!

Having two eyes helps you judge distances, too. Let’s try an experiment. First get two
pencils. Hold one pencil sideways in each hand. Then, close one eye and try to touch the
pencils’ erasers together. Can you do it? Try it again with both your eyes open. It is much
easier to do now!

We also have two eyes to protect our vision. Each eye works as a backup for the other one.
Sometimes an accident or a disease causes people to lose sight in one eye. But thanks to
the other eye, a person does not become totally blind. So having two eyes can help save
people’s vision, too.

1
Lesson 2 How Animals See Things

Many people think animals see things like humans do. But this is not true! Most animals
have their own unique way of seeing things.

Dogs cannot see some colors. They can only see gray, blue, and yellow. Some scientists
believe that red and green appear yellow to dogs. So dogs think red and green tomatoes
are all yellow! But dogs have better night vision than humans. That is why your pet dog
easily moves around in the dark.

Horses’ eyes give them an extremely wide view. That is because their eyes are on the sides
of their heads. It allows them to see about 350 degrees around them. So horses can easily
sense approaching predators and run away. However, horses cannot see things that are
right in front of them! They have a blind spot in the space between their two eyes.

Dragonflies’ eyes have about 30,000 lenses. Their eyes can see about 360 degrees around.
Also, dragonflies are very good at sensing motion. They can see most movements in slow
motion. Dragonflies catch their prey while flying. Their strong vision makes this easier to
do.

2
Lesson 3 Morris Frank and His Seeing Eye Dog, Buddy

Morris Frank was born in Tennessee in 1908. He lost sight in his right eye after a tree
branch hit it when he was six. When he was 16, he also lost sight in his left eye while
boxing. This made him blind.

When Frank was 19, his father read a newspaper story by Dorothy Harrison Eustis. Eustis
was a dog breeder in Switzerland. She wrote about training dogs to help blind people.

Frank asked Eustis to train a dog to help him. She agreed. In 1928, Frank traveled to
Switzerland to meet his new dog. Frank named her Buddy. After a few weeks of training,
Frank took Buddy home. Buddy became the first Seeing Eye dog in North America.

Buddy changed Frank’s life. With Buddy’s help, Frank could safely walk across busy
streets and through crowded buildings. Frank and Buddy taught people that Seeing Eye
dogs can give blind people more freedom. Soon after, Eustis came to the United States.
She and Frank started a school to train dogs called The Seeing Eye. The school has now
trained over 15,500 dogs. Frank and Buddy’s hard work has helped many blind people.

Lesson 4 A Workout for Your Eyes

3
People usually forget to exercise an important body part. Can you guess which one? It is
their eyes! Eye exercises strengthen your eye muscles. This will improve your vision. Here
are three easy exercises for your eyes.

Practicing focusing is one way to exercise your eyes. This helps your eyes to refocus
quickly on things that are near and far away. First, hang a calendar on the wall. Then
stand about three meters away from it. Hold a pencil in front of your nose. Look at a
number on the calendar for a few seconds. Then quickly look at the pencil. Do this several
times.

Rolling your eyeballs is a good exercise, too. First, close your eyes. Then open them and
look up. Move your eyes clockwise five times. Then look down. Now move your eyes in the
opposite direction.

Writing with your eyes is another simple exercise. Look at a wall and do not move your
head. Then pretend to write the alphabet with your eyes. Make the letters as big as you
can.

Try to do these three exercises every day. They will keep your eyes healthy and strong.

Chapter 2, Ice

4
Lesson 5 When Water Freezes, It Grows!

Water turns into ice when it becomes very cold. When water becomes ice, it changes from
a liquid to a solid. Do you know what happens during this change?

Water expands when it freezes. This is because particles in water move farther apart when
it becomes ice. So the volume of the ice is bigger than when it was water.

Here is a simple experiment you can try. Put some water in a plastic bottle. Draw a line at
the top of the water. Then put it in a freezer overnight. The next morning the water will be
frozen. And the ice will be higher than the line on the bottle.

Water can cause problems when it freezes and expands. In winter, water pipes in a house
sometimes freeze. Since ice takes up more space than water, it causes the pipes to break.
When this happens, water spills out and makes a big mess!

Something similar can happen in nature too. Flowing water gets into the holes of rocks. In
winter, this water freezes and expands. The ice makes the holes larger. This causes the
rocks to break apart.

Lesson 6 Our Amazing Alaska Vacation!

My family’s Alaska vacation was really fun! I liked visiting the glaciers the best. A glacier

5
is a massive area of ice. It slowly moves across land or down hills. Alaska has almost
100,000 glaciers! We visited two of them.

On our first day in Alaska, we went hiking on the Matanuska Glacier. It is a valley glacier
and is 43 kilometers long. We rented special spikes called crampons. They helped us walk
on the ice. We climbed up a hill and explored an ice cave. Pure glacier water dripped from
the ice in the cave. My sister and I drank some. It was cold and delicious!

The next day we went to the Hubbard Glacier. It is North America’s longest tidewater
glacier. It is 122 kilometers long! We saw it from a cruise ship. I was surprised by how
noisy the glacier was. It creaked loudly before a large piece of ice fell off. When the ice
landed in the water, it made a huge splash. It was as large as our house! I took a picture of
it. It was amazing to see these beautiful glaciers. This was our best family vacation ever!

Lesson 7 The Best Fathers in Antarctica

Emperor penguins are the biggest penguins in the world. They live in Antarctica.
6
Antarctica is very cold in winter. The temperature there once dropped to minus 89
degrees Celsius! Emperor penguins have their babies during the frosty winter months.
To have a baby penguin, the father penguin must work really hard.

First, the mother penguin lays one egg. Then she leaves her family to find food in the sea.

For the next two months, the father penguin takes care of the egg alone. He puts the egg
on his feet to keep it off the ice. His stomach covers the egg to keep it warm. If the egg
falls on the ice, it will soon freeze. So he must stand with the egg all day long. During this
time, he does not eat any food at all.

Finally, the egg hatches! For the next few days, the father keeps the chick warm. At last,
the mother returns to her family. She takes care of the baby and feeds it. Then the father
can go to the sea and eat. After all his hard work, he is starving!

Lesson 8 An Exciting Icy Race

Have you ever watched bobsledding on TV during the Winter Olympics? Racers push a
bobsled and then quickly jump into it. Then they zip down an icy track that looks like a
frozen roller coaster! Bobsleds can go as fast as 140 kilometers an hour. Moving that fast
must be very exciting and a little scary!

7
Bobsled teams have either two or four people. All teams have a driver and a brakeman.
The driver controls the bobsled. The brakeman stops it after the race. Four-person teams
have a driver, a brakeman, and two pushers. They help push the bobsled when the race
begins.

Bobsleds are made of strong, light metals. Two-person bobsleds are 2.7 meters long. The
ones for four people are 3.8 meters long.

Bobsled tracks are covered with thick artificial ice. They are around 1,500 meters long.
The tracks have at least 15 curves. Going around the curves quickly can be dangerous. So
racers need to be very careful.

At the Olympics, two-person teams go down the track twice. Four-person teams do it four
times. The team that has the fastest time wins the gold medal! The best teams can finish
the race in under a minute!

Chapter 3 Milk

Lesson 9 Mammals and Mothers’ Milk

Pigs, dolphins, and elephants are very different. However, they are all mammals. This
means they all start their lives drinking milk!

When a mammal is going to have a baby, her body begins to produce milk. After the baby
is born, it drinks this milk. The vitamins and nutrients in the milk help the baby grow
strong and healthy. However, different kinds of mammals need their mother’s milk for

8
different amounts of time.

Rabbits feed their babies milk twice a day. Baby rabbits only drink milk until they are
three weeks old. After three weeks, they start to eat food such as hay.

Cheetahs drink milk for much longer than rabbits. They stop drinking milk when they are
three or four months old. When they reach this age, their teeth and jaws are stronger. This
means they can eat meat instead of drinking milk.

Humans are mammals, too! We drink milk at the beginning of our lives, just like other
mammals. But we drink it for longer than other mammals. Sometimes human babies
drink their mother’s milk for several years. The milk we drink helps us grow!

Lesson 10 How Does Milk Get To Us?

You probably know that the milk we buy in the store comes from cows. But did you ever
wonder how the milk gets from the cows to our glasses?

First, farmers have to keep their cows healthy. The cows must eat a lot of good grass to
make milk. They eat for at least six hours every day.

Before farmers milk their cows, the cows’ udders must be cleaned. The cows are milked
twice a day. They are milked once in the morning and again in the afternoon. Each time,
the farmers wash the cows' udders before milking them.

9
Farmers use a milk machine to collect milk from the cows’ udders. The milk machine puts
the warm milk in a special tank to cool.

Then the milk is taken to a processing plant. The plant tests the milk to make sure it is
fresh. The plant then heats the milk. This kills any germs in the milk. This way, we know
it is okay to drink.

Finally, the milk is poured into containers. It is delivered to schools, restaurants, and
supermarkets. The fresh, delicious milk is ready for us to enjoy!

Lesson 11 Making Delicious Cottage Cheese at Home

Cottage cheese is a delicious and healthy food. People can enjoy it with fruit, salads, and
crackers. Surprisingly, it’s easy to make cottage cheese at home.

The main ingredient of cottage cheese is milk. You will need four cups of milk. You also
need a quarter cup of vinegar and a little bit of salt.

First, pour the milk into a pot. Slowly heat the milk for about an hour. Do not boil it! Then
take the pot off the heat.

Next, pour in the vinegar and add the salt. Start stirring right away. You will see the milk
10
begin to curdle. Keep stirring slowly for about two minutes.

Leave the mixture alone for 30 minutes. While you are waiting, put some cheesecloth
inside a colander. After 30 minutes, pour the mixture onto the cheesecloth.

Gather the corners of the cheesecloth and pick it up. Rinse the mixture under cold water
until it has cooled. Squeeze out the water. You will now see the curds inside the
cheesecloth. Put them in a bowl. You now have delicious, light, and fluffy cottage cheese!

Lesson 12 The Missing Children Milk Carton Program

Today, we have many ways to find lost or missing children. For example, we can use the
Internet to spread information about them. However, not very long ago, there were only a
few places for parents to post information about their missing children. One of these
places was very unusual: on the sides of milk cartons.

In 1979, a six-year-old boy named Etan Patz disappeared in New York City on his way to
school. The police and his parents tried to find him, but it was hard. At that time, missing
children were getting a lot of attention in the news. Because of this, Etan’s case got
national attention.

Soon, The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) started the
Missing Children Milk Carton Program. Hundreds of dairies joined the program. Etan
11
was the first missing child on a milk carton. The milk cartons with Etan’s photo were sent
all around the country. People could also see the faces of many other missing children on
their milk cartons.

The milk carton program helped bring attention to missing children. Though Etan Patz
was never found, the NCMEC has helped police with more than 182,000 missing-child
cases.

Chapter 4 Time

Lesson 13 Where Did Our Calendar Come From?

Do you know why our calendar has 12 months and 365 days in a year? In the past, people
used different calendars. It took a long time to make the calendar that we use today.

The Babylonians made a calendar based on the moon’s cycles. From one springtime to the
next, there are 12 full moons. So they made each year with 12 lunar months. But each
lunar month only had 29 or 30 days. So, the lunar year was shorter. It only lasted about
354 days.

The ancient Egyptians used a star to make their calendar. Every 365 days, the brightest
star rises next to the sun. This star is called the Dog Star. The Egyptians divided those 365
days into 12 months.

12
In Rome, Julius Caesar made another calendar with 12 months. He added an extra day in
February once every four years. A year with an extra day is called a leap year.

Later, in 1582, people made better rules for the leap years. They called this new calendar
the Gregorian calendar. This is the calendar that we use today.

Lesson 14 Telling Time before Watches

How do you tell time? Today, we have watches and cell phones. So it’s very easy. But do
you know how ancient people told time? They made some very interesting and useful
clocks using nature!

Sundials were the first ancient clocks. These clocks used shadows to tell time. Around
2000 B.C., people in West Asia built tall poles or buildings that made shadows. As the sun
moved across the sky, these shadows moved too. They watched the changes and could tell
time. Later, people made smaller sundials. They had markings for the hours. Their
shadows pointed to the exact time of day.

However, sundials could not tell time at night or on rainy days. So, around 1200 B.C.,
people in West Asia and Egypt started to use water clocks. Water clocks were containers
that let water drip out. As the water level got lower, marks on the container showed the
time. If an eight-hour clock ran out of water, eight hours had passed. Some water clocks
just let the water drip on the ground. Other water clocks had a second container to catch
13
the dripping water. It was used to refill the clock.

Lesson 15 Jean de Mairan’s Amazing Discovery

Everyone knows when they are hungry. Everyone knows when they are sleepy too. No
matter what time it is, our bodies tell us these things. It is like we have a clock inside us.
But did you know that some plants have something like this, too?

Early in the 18th century, there was a French astronomer named Jean de Mairan. His
favorite plant was the mimosa. It closed its leaves every night and opened them every
morning. He thought that this was because of the sun. He wasn’t sure, so he tried an
experiment.

He put a mimosa plant in a cupboard. Sunlight couldn’t reach it. He thought that the
plant’s leaves wouldn’t open or close without the sun.

However, he was very surprised – the plant still opened and closed its leaves in the dark!
Even without the sun, the plant knew when it was day and when it was night. It was like
the plant had an internal clock.
14
It was an amazing discovery. Scientists all over the world learned from de Mairan’s
experiment. Today, they still study plants’ internal clocks, all thanks to de Mairan and his
mimosa plant!

Lesson 16 The Mysterious Paintings of Salvador Dali

Have you ever seen a clock melt? It sounds impossible. But you can see this in paintings
by Salvador Dali.

Dali’s style of art is called surrealism. In surrealistic paintings, common things are often
changed strangely. Dali often painted things from his dreams. Therefore, the objects in
his paintings are very odd, too. This can make Dali’s paintings hard to understand.

Dali’s most famous painting is The Persistence of Memory. Like most of Dali’s paintings,
it is full of mysterious objects. For example, there are some clocks. But it looks like they
are melting! Maybe time is slipping away. On one upside-down clock, there are a lot of
ants. What are they doing there? Ants often eat dead things. So, does this mean the clock
is dead? There is also a dead-looking tree on a table. There is a mysterious figure on the
ground as well. It is long, soft, and half-melted. It looks like a person or a dolphin. Maybe
it is supposed to be Dali!

Why did Salvador Dali paint such things? Maybe he wanted to make people think when
15
they looked at his art. Even if we can’t understand his paintings, they are very interesting
to look at. Look for his paintings in an art museum and see the mysterious objects for
yourself!

16