y2meta.com-Different Materials In Clothes - Suit Yourself, Greg! - Lesson Preview

It's seven o'clock in the morning and Greg needs to get ready for work. He picks up his work clothes and sighs. He must wear the same thing every day. A cotton work shirt, denim work pants, heavy leather boots and a plastic hard hat. He is getting a bit bored of wearing these clothes. As he looks at himself in the mirror, he remembers seeing his neighbour, Suraj, dressed in a lovely silk outfit to go to a traditional Indian wedding. He starts to wonder what it would be like to wear some traditional clothing from other cultures, like Suraj's. Probably a lot softer than my tough work clothes, he imagines. Every day, Suraj wears a very handsome turban on his head. It is made of soft cotton fabric. It looks like it would be softer and more comfortable than Greg's plastic hard hat. Greg takes his hard hat off and imagines wearing Suraj's cotton turban instead. He fits it carefully and takes a look at himself. It looks great. But then Greg remembers that he will be wearing this turban on a work site, where it can be a bit dangerous. What if a tool fell off a roof and hit him on the head? Could this soft cotton turban protect him the way a hard plastic hat could? Bonk! Greg pictures a spanner landing on his head. Ouch! cries Greg. He takes off the soft turban and puts his hard hat back on. He can just imagine what Suraj would say. That's not why we wear turbans, Greg, laughs Suraj in Greg's imagination. We wear them because it is part of our culture and religion to cover our hair. They're not hard hats. Hmm, even though Suraj's turban is very nice, I'm not from his culture and don't share his beliefs, so I shouldn't wear it. And my head needs more protection when I'm at work. I'd better put my hard hat back on, Greg realises. Greg now looks at his gloves, which are made from fabric and bits of leather. They bend easily when he moves his fingers around, and they protect his hands from all kinds of dangers at his work site. But they're not as warm as mittens made by Inuit people, who are native to the Arctic. Greg imagines wearing the soft, warm mittens made from caribou skin and fur. Caribou are a kind of deer. He can almost feel the warmth on his hands. The only problem, though, is that Greg can't really do anything in these mittens because he can't use his fingers properly. Imagine if Greg was trying to hold a tool or build a wall or even draw some plans. Everything would fall out of his hands. What a disaster that would be, exclaims Nuneek, who pops into Greg's memory. Nuneek is a seamstress that Greg met when he was skiing in Canada. We wear those mittens when hunting during our snowy winters because they are super warm and strong. The fur on our mittens stays dry even when they get covered in snow. But you would be too clumsy in these mittens at work, Greg. I'd better wear my protective gloves that let me use my fingers then, decides Greg. Greg puts his gloves on and turns his attention to his work pants. They're so plain, he complains. I remember when I was on holidays in New Zealand. The Maori grass skirts were amazing. What if I wore one of those today? Greg thinks about wearing a Maori flax skirt. Flax is a type of grass.