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from The Mini Page © 2014 Universal Uclick

For thousands of years, glass was almost as valuable as gemstones. And then, about 2,000 years ago, people learned a new way of shaping it. That process, glassblowing, made it much easier and cheaper to form glass. Glass wasn’t just for royalty and the wealthy anymore. About 200 years ago, people in Germany began blowing glass Christmas tree ornaments, one by one. These ornaments were expensive treasures. Then, in the 1930s, the Corning Glass Factory in Corning, New York, invented a process for mass-producing glass ornaments. All of a sudden, ordinary people could cover their trees with shiny glass bulbs. The Mini Page talked with experts at the Corning Museum of Glass to learn more about glassblowing.

Nature’s glass When a solid material is so hot it turns to liquid, we say it is molten. Sometimes, when molten material cools super quickly, it turns into glass. In nature, volcanoes, lightning and meteorite strikes can all produce such fast, hot heat that materials such as sand are turned into glass.

Glassmaking About 4,000 years ago, people learned how to make glass, perhaps from making pottery. The basic ingredients are easy to find. They include quartz sand, limestone, and a material such as sodium carbonate, or soda ash. Sand is made of the chemical silica (SIL-uh-kuh), which is one of the most plentiful materials on Earth. Glassmakers placed the ingredients into a clay pot inside a furnace and heated it to high temperatures. Sand does not melt until it is hotter than 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The added materials lower the necessary temperature to about half that, but a huge amount of wood was still needed to fuel the furnace. One of the reasons glassmakers brought the industry to America was because Europe was running out of trees to use as fuel. But America was full of trees. After the English established a colony in Jamestown, Virginia, in about 1607, one of the first businesses they set up was a glass shop. Wood was the main fuel for glassmaking until the 1900s, when people turned to coal, natural gas and electricity.

A Royal Substance for Everyone

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A glory hole is a small furnace used to reheat glass pieces so glassmakers can continue to work on them.

The Christmas tree at the Corning Museum of Glass is made of more than 2,000 hand-blown glass ornaments.

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Ready Resourcesfrom The Mini Page © 2014 Universal Uclick

The Mini Page provides ideas for websites, books or other resources that will help you learn more about this week’s topics.

On the Web:• cmog.org• bit.ly/1AsW0NhAt the library:• “Craft It: Hand-blown Glass” by Madison Spielman• “The Glassblower’s Children” by Maria Gripe

G H S L E S S E V C P L E U F S L E A C I L I S F O A K F C B A A A R E V R A M A R D U O L H N S T N E T L O M S E R R O A O D S Y T I V A R G T N N W R L T E P I P W O L B V A I I T R E K R O W S S A L G C N N T O P G N I L A E N N A E G G T P Y G E S T N E M A N R O

Words that remind us of glassblowing are hidden in the block below. Some words are hidden backward or diagonally. See if you can find: ANNEALING, ART, BLOWING, BLOWPIPE, CORE, CORNING, EGYPT, FAST, FUEL, FURNACE, GLASS, GLASSWORKER, GRAVITY, HEAT, HOT, MARVER, MOLTEN, ORNAMENTS, PAD, POT, SAND, SILICA, VESSELS.

Glassblowingfrom The Mini Page © 2014 Universal Uclick

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Glass for royalty About 4,000 years ago, people learned to make containers and decorations out of glass. One ancient method was to pour molten glass into a mold made of clay or bronze. Another method was to wrap molten glass around a core made of mud, dung or other materials. After the glass cooled, glassmakers would pick the core materials out, leaving a hollow glass vessel. This process was so difficult, expensive and time-consuming that it was used only to make costly items such as perfume bottles. Only the wealthy could afford glass vessels, jewelry and decorations. Ancient Egyptian rulers such as Cleopatra believed valuable perfumes should be stored in equally valuable bottles, such as those made of glass. In Egypt, the only people allowed to make glass containers were craftspeople serving the royal court. Egyptian glass jewelry was prized.

Glassblowing Glassworkers have to race against time. When they gather the glass out of the furnace, it’s soft and easy to work with. But the moment it’s out of the heat, it begins to harden. If the glass is thin, they may have only a minute to shape it before it gets too hard to work with. Thicker glass might cool in seven minutes. Early glassmakers may have had a separate chamber of the oven that allowed the glass to cool slowly. Today, electric ovens lower the temperatures slowly. This slow cooling process is called annealing (uh-NEEL-ing).

Blowing Bubbles of Glass

Inventing glassblowing Glassblowing is the art of shaping glass by blowing air through a blowpipe, or tube, into a ball of molten glass. It was invented about 2,000 years ago in the area of present-day Iraq and Syria. Forming a vessel around a core took hours and worked only with small vessels. But with a blowpipe, glassmakers could form a flask in about three minutes. Size wasn’t an issue.

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A Corning Museum of Glass gaffer blows a bubble into hot glass. A gaffer is the master craftsman in charge of a team of hot-glass workers.

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Glassmakers gather the blob of molten glass at the end of a long pipe to pull it from the furnace.

from The Mini Page © 2014 Universal Uclick

You’ll need:• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa • 4 cups low-fat milk• 1/4 cup sugar • 1 teaspoon peppermint extract• 1 cup water • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extractWhat to do:1. In a small pot, combine cocoa and sugar and stir well.2. Stir in water and bring to a boil.3. Add the milk and cook on medium heat. Stir continually until

heated, about 5 minutes.4. Remove from heat and stir in the peppermint and vanilla

extracts. Makes 5 (1-cup) servings.You will need an adult’s help with this recipe.

TM Rookie Cookie’s RecipePeppermint Hot Chocolate

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Leslie: Why was the lobster locked up in jail?Lori: Because it was always pinching things!

All the following jokes have something in common. Can you guess the common theme or category?

Lara: What do you call a tennis player who keeps returning balls high in the air?

Linelle: A lob-ster!

TM MightyFunny’s Mini Jokes

Len: What happens when you cross a dog with a lobster?

Lisa: You get a Doberman pincher!

from The Mini Page © 2014 Universal Uclick

Meet Quvenzhané WallisQuvenzhané (kwuh-VEN-zhuh-nay) Wallis

stars as Annie in the movie “Annie,” a modern version of “Little Orphan Annie.”

Quvenzhané, nicknamed Nazie, is 11 years old. She was born in Houma, Louisiana, and has three older siblings. Her name is made up of parts of her parents’ names and “zhané,” which means “fairy” in Swahili.

When she was 6, Nazie played the role of Hushpuppy in the movie “Beasts of the

Southern Wild.” She was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance, the youngest person ever to be nominated for best actress.

Nazie likes to carry purses shaped liked dogs. She says she wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up and has given book readings to help out a pet hospital.

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Mini SpyMini Spy and her friends are watching glassblowers at work. See if you can find:

q number 2 q letter A q kite q number 7q snail q bell q ladder q bread loafq sailboat q teapot q bone q rulerq key q chicken q whale q word MINIq heart q exclamation mark q question mark

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from The Mini Page © 2014 Universal Uclick

Major League Baseball’s regular season traditionally lasts from April through September. But it’s during October, when the sport’s playoffs take place, that big-leaguers can become legends. This past October, San Francisco Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner hurled his way to legendary status. Madison pitched 52 2/3 innings over the course of the 2014 postseason, tallying a 4-1 record as well as a save. His earned-run-average amounted to just 1.03 as the Giants powered past the Pittsburgh Pirates, Washington Nationals, St. Louis Cardinals and, finally, the Kansas City Royals in the World Series. “MadBum” also was named the Most Valuable Player of both the National League Championship Series and the World Series, earning himself a brand-new pickup truck! Championship success is nothing new for Madison and the Giants, who have won three titles in the past five seasons. In that time, Madison has achieved a 4-0 World Series record, with one save and an ERA of just 0.25.

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Height: 6-5Age: 25

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from The Mini Page © 2014 Universal Uclick

The Mini Page StaffBetty Debnam - Founding Editor and Editor at Large Lisa Tarry - Managing Editor Lucy Lien - Associate Editor Wendy Daley - Artist

Forces of nature The most important forces that glassmakers work with are heat and gravity. If the shaped glass stays too hot, it will slump or move. If it cools too fast, it will crack. The glassmaker can form a hot ball of glass into a vase using only gravity. The bottom of the hot ball will narrow and stretch longer when held straight up and down.

Shaping the glass To continue shaping the bubble of molten glass, glassmakers roll it on a special table called a marver. Glassmakers can also shape the hot glass with a pad that protects their hands. Today, they often use a wet pile of newspapers as the pad. Glassmakers use a pair of tongs called jacks to flare out the mouth of the container or mold the glassware.

Christmas ornaments In the 1800s, glassblowers in Lauscha, Germany, began creating blown-glass Christmas ornaments. For years, Lauscha was the only supplier of glass ornaments. Tubes of glass were melted over a flame, a technique called flameworking or lampworking. Molten glass could be blown into molds to form shapes such as bells. Once the molded glass cooled, glassmakers poured a silvery substance such as mercury into the hollow ornament. This coated the interior and dried like paint, making the ornament shiny.

Coming to America In 1926, Corning invented the ribbon machine to mass-produce electric light bulbs. As World War II loomed, an ornament-maker from the Lauscha area, Max Eckhardt, realized that war would make it hard for other countries to keep importing ornaments from Germany. In 1939, he worked with Corning to adapt the ribbon machine to turn out Christmas bulbs for his American company, Shiny Brite.

Glassblowing Traditions

Team effort Because glassmakers have to work so fast, they often work in teams. Each member may do a particular job, such as shaping the final vessel or forming the handle. Early glassmaking was often a family affair. For hundreds of years, boys as young as 10 worked in glassblowing factories. The boys would do jobs such as opening and closing the molds or putting the still-hot glassware into the cooling oven. Glassmaking was one of the last industries to do away with child labor, not ending it until the 1900s.

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A Corning Museum glass artist shapes hot glass into a handle for a pitcher.

This catalog ad shows a selection of Corning ornaments. Corning sold clear ornaments to companies and sold their own decorated ornaments separately.

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The Corning ribbon machine could produce 300,000 ornaments a day. The first year, Corning produced 1 million. The next year, it produced 40 million.

The Mini Page thanks Kelly Conway, curator, American glass; and Eric Meek, Hot Glass Show team leader, at the Corning Museum of Glass for help with this issue.

Look through your newspaper for pictures and ads for glass.

Next week, The Mini Page offers suggestions for winter reading.