“Once in a Blue Moon”

This morning I woke up very early at about 04.30am. I was still sleepy and thought I would go back to sleep, when I realized it was an opportunity to see something that rarely happens.I remembered that I had read in the English newspaper “The Guardian” that a great drama could be seen in the sky in January: before dawn five bright planets – Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn, would be seen simultaneously in the sky! As you can imagine, this is something which does not happen very often – in fact it happens “once in a blue moon.”

You might be wondering at this point whether there has ever been a “blue moon” and that’s a good question! Apparently, the only times there have been “blue moons” was when there have been volcanic eruptions or enormous forest fires. You can imagine that these situations havehappened infrequently in the past, so we still say that rare events happen once in a blue moon!

Here are some examples:

My husband buys me flowers once in a blue moon!

It snows in Rome once in a blue moon!

Can you make your own sentences using any of the idioms of the week? You can post them on our facebook page or show them to your teacher, and DON’T FORGET to look out for the five planets!