Guy Fawkes Day

November the 5th is Guy Fawkes Day.  You can read about the history of Guy Fawkes Day in Japanese here: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AC%E3%82%A4%E3%83%BB%E3%83%95%E3%82%A9%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AF%E3%82%B9  

...or in English here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes

Children in New Zealand love Guy Fawkes Day because it's the only time of year that you can buy fireworks.  We went to a friend's house and had a barbeque.  There was a beautiful rainbow, it was very bright!

In this photo you can see my daughter Lyra with a 'sparkler'.  She had lots of fun.  Sparklers are quite safe so they are good for children.  When I was a child you could buy a lot more kinds of fireworks than now.  Many kinds, like rockets, are no longer sold because of the risk of fires.  Also because some people didn't use them carefully they caused injuries.

This kind is also popular, they are bright and noisy!  The children watched the fireworks happily.  Because it's nearly summer here it wasn't very dark.  My children go to bed quite early.  Thom, who's five, goes to bed at 6.30 pm.  Lyra, who's just turned 8, goes to bed at 7.30 pm.  They both get up at 6.30 in the morning.  In autumn we usually have a bonfire and light some fireworks then.  It gets dark early at that time of year!


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Making adverbs with -ly.

'The children watched the fireworks happily.'

You can make many 'feeling' adjectives into adverbs by adding -ly.  This is very useful!

Some examples:

sad - sadly 
happy - happily   (be careful, the 'y' becomes an 'i'!)
angry - angrily  (be careful, the 'y' becomes an 'i'!)
nervous - nervously
excited - excitedly
hungry - hungrily  (be careful, the 'y' becomes an 'i'!)
shy - shyly (be careful, the 'y' DOESN'T become an 'i'!!)

This kind of adverb is usually placed after the direct object of the sentence.  If there is no object, put it after the verb:

- The children watched the movie excitedly.
- The dog ate the meat hungrily.
- Bill answered nervously.