Current Events for Kids?
September 13, 2008
Current Events have landed. When I was in the fourth grade, I had to do weekly Current Event reports, and now my son does, too. Actually, as fourth-graders way back when, we could also just copy something out of the World Book encyclopedia and call it a day; I still remember Sally B.'s explanation of The Exoskeleton of Insects. Good times, good times.
Anyway, I am trying to compile a list of helpful web sites for Junior and other third, fourth, and fifth graders who may need a similar resource. Time for Kids is used in the classroom, so we have that covered; the Weekly Reader web site is geared to subscribers. (Ed.: Noted, 9/25: A Weekly Reader editor wrote in to point out the site's "Election Center 2008" at the top of the home page. That would indeed help Current Eventsters.) Our daily newspaper is the New York Times, and the reading level is too high for our fourth-grader.
Here is what I have so far. Many feature more games and advertising than news. I will happily add on suggestions, which I encourage you to leave in the comments. Magazines that don't have web sites would be appreciated, too.
Time for Kids
Science News for Kids
Discovery Channel animal news
Discovery Channel Planet Earth news
National Geographic for Kids
Sports Illustrated for Kids
Additions
FactCheckEd.org (from UPenn's Annenberg Public Policy Center)
Scholastic News Online, and other Scholastic magazines
Brain Pop
The Cricket group of magazines for children, with new web sites coming soon
Kids Newsroom
Many thanks to Farm School, Pooja Makhijani, Chris Barton, Sheila of Greenridge Chronicles, and Mandy for the suggestions so far.
Library Mermaid's Susan contributed some good homework rescoures. Gracias!
Refdesk
Kathy Schrock's Discovery Education site
B.J. Pinchbeck
Sandhya suggests Weekly Reader's Current Events News Blog, which features the work of, among others, some kid and teen bloggers.
- Scholastic Classroom Magazines
- Wall Street Journal (Student Ed.), although, on second thought, that might be too much for Junior right now.
Posted by: Pooja | September 13, 2008 at 10:31 PM
Have you seen Brainpop? It's more contemporary than current, but great for providing background information about today's issues, and fun in spades.
http://www.brainpop.com/
Posted by: Chris Barton | September 14, 2008 at 09:03 AM
http://www.kidsnewsroom.org/
===
I haven't checked out this site for ages, but someone once recommended it to me. Maybe it'll be of use to you.
Posted by: Sheila | September 15, 2008 at 12:18 AM
http://www.cricketmag.com
14 magazines for kids available-Muse magazine especially higlights current events. Most of the magazines have websites especially for kids:
http://www.cricketmag.com/kids.
Posted by: Mandy | September 15, 2008 at 08:12 AM
Thank you, Pooja, Chris, Sheila, and Mandy. I noted your suggestions in the post. Great!
Posted by: Susan T. | September 15, 2008 at 02:36 PM
Refdesk: http://www.refdesk.com/homework.html is a good one, Kathy Schrock, an educator the educators love, has a website with a lot of great links: http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/kidstuff.html
and there is the very cool B.J.Pinchbeck's site has tons: http://www.bjpinchbeck.com/
Additionally most libraries have extensive listings of both fun and homework related sites under the children's room listings and these are nice since librarians tend to check in on their links to make sure they're still good.
Posted by: Susan | September 17, 2008 at 09:32 PM
Hey thanks for putting this list together. I'm adding them to our school's Diigo list of links.
Posted by: cloudscomecloudscome | September 21, 2008 at 06:54 AM
Susan, thanks! Those sites look quite helpful.
Cloudscome, you're welcome. Last week Jr. used his National Geographic for Kids magazine, but this week he wants to use "the Internet." It definitely helps to narrow that down!
Posted by: Susan | September 21, 2008 at 10:16 AM
Weekly Reader's Current Events magazine also has a blog which is a good resource for subscribers and non-subscribers: http://www.cenewsblog.com/
Posted by: sandhya | September 24, 2008 at 09:18 PM
Hi, I'm an editor at Weekly Reader, and I found your comments interesting. You misrepresent Weekly Reader's website, however, by saying it is only for subscribers. While there is a special section for subscribers, most of the content is free to all. For example, there's terrific stuff about the election, including games, a vocabulary wheel, calendar, and other stuff. And it's all free to everyone at
http://www.weeklyreader.com/election/ Take a look!
Posted by: IW | September 24, 2008 at 09:34 PM
Thank you, Sandhya! I'll add the blog.
IW,
In the entry "Current Events for Kids?," I said that the Weekly Reader site is geared to subscribers. I did not say that it is only for subscribers. I came to the "geared" conclusion because right there on the opening page of weeklyreader.com are several headlines that say, "Subscriber-only content." Clicking on the "Kids" button at the top of that page leads one to games, coloring pages, and a "speak out" section--all of which are great but are not resources that a child could use to write a report. The Election Center, though, is good for that, and I will add it. Thank you!
Posted by: Susan Thomsen (editor) | September 25, 2008 at 08:01 AM
I think that this is a very helpful article to everyone, all ages!
Faith,
News Reporter for Kentucky
[email protected]
Posted by: Faith | November 11, 2008 at 03:01 PM
Thanks so much, Faith. You can see I had quite a bit of help compiling the resources! I personally used several of them during the election--and I'm way older than fourth grade.
Posted by: Susan (Chicken Spaghetti) | November 11, 2008 at 04:45 PM
Thanks so much! This website really helps. You have a really good list of websites too!
Posted by: Arianne | December 15, 2008 at 04:58 PM
You're certainly welcome. Thank you so much for stopping by.
Posted by: Susan_Thomsen | December 15, 2008 at 05:59 PM
Good site for listing other kids news type links.
Posted by: Lori | January 06, 2009 at 09:03 AM
http://www.headlinespot.com/for/kids/
This is the link I was referring.....
Posted by: Lori | January 06, 2009 at 09:04 AM