Cork quizmasters raise over €11k for charities
An online quiz set up by two cork natives has raised over €11,500 for charities since lockdown began.
Patrick Ahern and Colm Lougheed set up and present a quiz live every Tuesday, it is free to join and they encourage people to donate to a selected charity every week. They also have themed quizzes on a Friday which is used to pay the bills and keep the other quiz up and running.
The pair often MC and run events together in Cork, however have recently been forced to stop. They personally donated €1000 to pieta house on top of the donations received in their quiz on April 14.
“The response from the public has been much bigger than anything we expected and we hope to be able to help out with some of the places that are most under pressure at the moment,” says Patrick.
Study proves children engage with how and why stories
Children prefer storybooks that explain why and how things happen according to a new study in Frontiers in Psychology.
Researchers have been aware of how causal information is more interesting to children, however they didn’t know whether it influenced their preferences in activities like reading.
“We wanted to explore how this early interest in causal information might affect everyday activities with young children – such as joint book reading,” explains Margaret Shavlik of Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, one of the researchers.
“We believe this result may be due to children’s natural desire to learn about how the world works,” explains Shavlik.
The results could be helpful for parents and teachers and help increase children’s interest in reading, an important part of early literacy and language skills. “If children do indeed prefer storybooks with causal explanations, adults might seek out more causally rich books to read with children, which might in turn increase the child’s motivation to read together, making it easier to foster early literacy,” added Shavlik.
Replace those dryer sheets and fabric softeners
There are a few ways to make your washing more eco-friendly. One of these is to use dryer balls to replace your dryer sheets and or fabric softener. Never heard of them? Dryer balls come in lots of different materials and sizes, the most popular type being wool dryer balls. You can get plastic and rubber ones too however wool ones are slightly better for a number of reasons.
Wool dryer balls are the most biodegradable alternative and they soften fabrics by agitating against the fibres in clothes. This means that on a shorter drying cycle clothes should feel softer.
The way they work is that they help prevent wet clothes from sticking together in the dryer, they separate items and allow warm air to flow between them. The dryer balls also get hot quickly, which adds extra heat to the dryer and boosts the whole process. This means that a load of washing dries faster and more efficiently.