Current Events for Kids?

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.

Comments

[Pooja]

- Scholastic Classroom Magazines

- Wall Street Journal (Student Ed.), although, on second thought, that might be too much for Junior right now.

[Chris Barton]

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/

[Sheila]

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.

[Mandy]

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.

[Susan T.]

Thank you, Pooja, Chris, Sheila, and Mandy. I noted your suggestions in the post. Great!

[Susan]

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.

[cloudscomecloudscome]

Hey thanks for putting this list together. I'm adding them to our school's Diigo list of links.

[Susan]

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!

[sandhya]

Weekly Reader's Current Events magazine also has a blog which is a good resource for subscribers and non-subscribers: http://www.cenewsblog.com/

[IW]

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!

[Susan Thomsen (editor)]

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!

[Faith]

I think that this is a very helpful article to everyone, all ages!
Faith,
News Reporter for Kentucky
[email protected]

[Susan (Chicken Spaghetti)]

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.

[Arianne]

Thanks so much! This website really helps. You have a really good list of websites too!

[Susan_Thomsen]

You're certainly welcome. Thank you so much for stopping by.

[Lori]

Good site for listing other kids news type links.

[Lori]

http://www.headlinespot.com/for/kids/

This is the link I was referring.....