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The news is a rich gateway to learning – both in and outside of school. The following is a list of fun activities to connect the broadcast, online, and print news to your children's lives at home, while traveling, and more.
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- Use a kid's interest in a particular movie release, sports star, etc. as a jumping-off point for a scrapbook project. Have kids look for all news stories, ads, and images relating to the topic in newspapers, newsmagazines and online news sites. Assemble the materials into a scrapbook.
- Consult the weather report with your child as you make plans for the weekend. Should you bring an umbrella when leaving the house? What should you pack for your upcoming getaway?
- Examine the locations of local and national news stories and pinpoint them on a map in relation to where friends and family live.
- Track weather in cities where friends or family members live.
- As Election Day nears, review election-related news items with your child. Explain the issues that will be on the ballot, and explain who you're voting for and why. Take your child with you to the polling booth to get first-hand experience of the electoral process.
- During election time, election-related signs and flyers can often be found in our neighborhoods. Look at the signs with your child and discuss (or find out) who and what they are promoting and what issues the various candidates represent.
- Teach by example. Read the newspaper with your kids. Discuss questions that arise.
- Listen to local news radio as you are driving with your kids, and discuss the issues raised.
- As you are watching televised news or reading the newspaper with your child, pick a story that piques their interest and complete additional research on the topic with your child.
- Print photos off of news Web sites or cut them out of the paper, removing the captions. Have your child come up with captions for the photos. Compare the captions your child comes up with to the ones originally associated with the photos.
- On a long car ride, play a "news" version of the "picnic" game. The game requires two or more players and usually begins "I'm going on a picnic and I'm bringing (item beginning with "a")." The second person then repeats what the first person named and adds something beginning with "b," and so forth – leading to lists like "I'm going on a picnic and I'm bringing apples, bananas, carnations, dalmations, egg salad…. " The list keeps going back and forth between the players with each trying to remember all the items as the list gets longer. The news version would use items and people that can be found in the day's newspaper. For example, "I'm going on a road trip and I'm bringing activists, Barack Obama, Condoleeza Rice, a Dell computer, …."
- Increase your kids' awareness of newspapers around the country and the world by bringing back (or asking friends and family to bring back) newspapers from business trips and vacations. Kids can compare these papers to their local newspapers to notice the similarities and differences.
- Alternatively, visit Web sites to learn about the major newspapers in different locations – around the state, the country, and the world. Make labels of the major newspaper names and pin them to a map.
- At family gatherings, have your child interview older friends and relatives about the most important news events of their lives. Which news events do they think were the most important in their lifetimes? Why?
- Anniversaries of major national and world events are frequently mentioned in the news. On these news anniversaries, connect these historic events to your personal history for your child, by explaining where you were and what you were doing when that event took place. What impact did it have on your life and on the lives of loved ones?
- Track news, statistics, and events relating to a kid's favorite sport, sports player, or team.
- If your child learns about a local historical event during a visit to a museum, on a field trip or by hearing a story told by an older person, take a trip to the library to research how the event was reported in the news at the time it took place.
- Log on to PBSKids News and watch one of the current news reports on the site with your child. Discuss the story with your child.
- Ask your child to report the week's news to you by logging on to PBSKids News and reporting the stories they hear.
- News stories often include abbreviations and acronyms, like U.N. (United Nations), W.H.O. (World Health Organization), Sen. (Senator), etc. Create a running glossary of abbreviations and acronyms found in the news and post it somewhere in your home. As a side activity, develop acronyms to use in the home for common household occurrences.
- Make faraway news stories comprehensible to your kids by discussing how distant events can have effects on the lives of those close by. For example, a fire in Arizona might occur because of dry conditions in the Southwest – the same conditions that might make Aunt Betsy in Los Angeles need to water her plants more this week.
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