Dinosaurs Are Among Us

A new museum exhibit looks at the connections between birds and dinosaurs

The Yutyrannus dinosaur had a shaggy coat of feathers, similar to what birds have today.

Dinosaurs ruled the planet for millions of years, and they are generally believed to have gone extinct. But the reality is that modern versions of dinosaurs are all around us. Scientists have been exploring similarities between birds and dinosaurs, and new research shows that these two types of animals are directly linked.

R. MICKENS—@AMNH

The exhibit Dinosaurs Among Us is now at the American Museum of Natural History.

The connections between birds and dinosaurs are explored in a new museum exhibit called Dinosaurs Among Us at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Mark Norell, the chair of the division of paleontology at the museum, is the curator of the exhibit. He said it is based on new scientific evidence collected over the last two decades. “I think this is really going to shake up the way people think of dinosaurs,” Norell told reporters at a preview event. “One could argue that we still live in the age of dinosaurs.”

Making Connections

The exhibit includes ancient fossils and lifelike models of dinosaurs of all sizes to show the evolution of dinosaurs into birds. It examines several features that are shared between the two species, including feathers, complex brains, the shapes and sizes of eggs, and the ability to fly.

ZHAO CHUANG—COURTESY PEKING NATURAL SCIENCE ORGANIZATION

The Oviraptosaur dinosaur looks like a bird. It was small in size, and had a toothless beak and claws.

 

 

Paleontologists have discovered that many dinosaurs had feathers. Thousands of feathered dinosaur fossils have been found in China in the last 15 years, according to Norell. Today, birds are the only feathered animals alive.

Birds today make nests, lay eggs and tend to babies. Fossil research shows that some dinosaurs also laid eggs and made nests.

Also, birds have wishbones and hollow bones, which are bones that don’t weight much and allow birds to take more air into their lungs. These adaptations help with flight. Some dinosaurs had these features as well. In addition, the exhibit shows that there are many similarities between the legs, claws, and feet of dinosaurs and birds.

New Techniques

Norell noted that the research behind this exhibit is the result of advanced scientific techniques and new technologies. For example, researchers used a scanning process called computed tomography (CT) to look inside the brains of extinct dinosaurs. CTs combine many X-rays to produce a three-dimensional image.

“Modern technology tells us more than we thought we could ever know about the connections between dinosaurs and birds,” Norell said.

Can you tell me how dinosaurs and birds are alike? 

Is This Billy the Kid?

A new photo of a famous outlaw may have been found.

He was a gunfighter and a thief who killed as many as nine people and broke out of jail twice. Billy the Kid was one of the most notorious outlaws of the Wild West.

Billy’s real name was probably Henry McCarty, though he also went by the name William H. Bonney. He was called “the Kid” because he was just a teenager when he became a criminal. He died in 1881, at the age of 21, after a sheriff shot him in New Mexico.

Despite the Kid’s fame, only one photo of him was known to exist. But now a company claims to have found a second photo of the famous outlaw—and it has been valued at $5 million!

DETECTIVE WORK

In 2010, a man named Randy Guijarro bought three photos for $2 at an antique shop in Fresno, California. When he took a closer look at one of the photos, he thought one of the men in it might be Billy the Kid. Last year, Guijarro took the photo to Kagin’s, a company that collects and sells historical objects from the Old West.

David McCarthy, an expert at Kagin’s, agreed that the man in the photo looks like the Kid.

“But just looking alike isn’t enough,” he says.

McCarthy and his team worked for more than a year to carefully authenticate, or prove, that the image was genuine. With help from historians and photography experts, they tried to match the other men in the photo with members of the Kid’s gang.

Last month, Kagin’s announced that it had enough evidence to prove that the man in the photo was Billy the Kid. Some experts believe the photo was taken during a wedding at a ranch in New Mexico.

Kagin’s has put the photo up for sale for $5 million. If it sells for that amount, it would be the most expensive photo ever sold.

NOT SO FAST

However, some people aren’t convinced that the new photo shows the Kid. Mark Lee Gardner, a historian who wrote a book about the outlaw, is one of them. He says there aren’t any historical documents to prove without a doubt that the Kid was ever at the place in New Mexico shown in the picture.

Gardner thinks the debate over the photo is sure to continue. But he says that’s part of the fun of studying history.

“When there’s controversy,” he says, “that means history is alive.”

Billy the Kid was an outlaw a long time ago. While he was famous for being a bad guy, can you make a connection to any people who are famous? Please tell why.

Is This a Lost Ancient City?

Archaeologists may have uncovered the location of an ancient Greek city—and the island that it was on.

For more than 400 years, the fate of an ancient Greek city, called Kane, has baffled experts. The city, mentioned in many ancient texts, was on one of a cluster of three islands in the Aegean Sea. These islands were all located off the coast of modern-day Turkey. Two of the islands, now known as the Garip Islands, are still there.

But the third island, an important stopping point on ancient trade routes, no longer appeared on maps made after the 16th century. Until this past November, no one knew why!

Geo-archaeologists—scientists who study ancient landforms—have helped solve the mystery. The island did not disappear, they say. Well, not exactly anyway. New evidence suggests that this former island is now a mainland peninsula. That’s a piece of land that sticks out from a larger land mass and is almost completely surrounded by water. Most of the state of Florida is an example of a peninsula.

How did the island turn into a peninsula? At one time, a channel, a narrow stretch of water between two areas of land, separated the island and mainland. “The original channel was silted up,” Felix Pirson of the German Archaeology Ins

titute, which led the study, told Scholastic News Online. That means the space between the island and mainland was filled with materials carried by running water. That’s how the peninsula formed.

DIGGING DEEPER

To test their theory of what happened to the island, the geo-archaeologists decided to drill into the peninsula. Instead of finding solid ground, they discovered loose soil and rock. To the scientists, this suggests that the land there had formed somewhat recently, perhaps because of earthquakes or the erosion of agricultural fields on the mainland.

The scientists are looking forward to doing further testing. They hope to figure out exactly when the land bridge between the mainland and the island formed. This could provide them with more information about the area during ancient times, they say. “The aim is to reconstruct the ancient environment [to] understand history,” Pirson says.

Scientists use the scientific method to solve lots of mysteries. What was one experiment we did that we use the scientific method?

A Helping 3-D Hand

A little girl gets a life-changing gift.

BY LILIAN JOCHMANN | FOR THE SCHOLASTIC NEWS KIDS PRESS CORPS

It all started in 2013, when Shea Stollenwerk, then eight years old, asked for a new hand for Christmas. Shea was born with a partial right hand, which restricts her ability to do things that other kids take for granted.

“My mom went online” to look for help, says Shea, who lives in Mukowango, Wisconsin. Shea’s mother, Ranee, soon learned about a community of artists, designers, and scientists who are making big breakthroughs withprosthetic (artificial) hands.

Frankie Flood, a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, was among the designers who saw Ranee’s online request. Flood enlisted help from fellow professor Adream Blair and their students, who were learning how to make designs using a 3-D printer, a device that can create layers of material, like plastic or metal, one on top of the other, to produce solid objects.

“We made a mold of Shea’s hand out of plaster,” Flood explains about the beginning of the process. “We made a cast, and then we 3-D scanned her hand.”

A LOW-COST SOLUTION

Flood emphasizes that Shea’s “robo-hand” is not like devices that medical professionals make for people who have lost limbs. Such devices can cost thousands of dollars, whereas a “robo-hand” can be printed for less than $50.

While being fitted in Flood’s laboratory, Shea got to choose the color of her new hand. She went with bright pink. She now has a pink hand, a purple hand, and a purple and pink one, and can do things that she couldn’t do before, like peel potatoes, pick up objects, and catch a ball.

Flood and his team have since built hands for six other local children. Indirectly, they have helped dozens more, by posting their designs online so that people around the world can print them out. Flood is also working on prosthetic legs for military veterans who were injured on the battlefield. “Without a covering, the [prosthetic] leg is kind of ugly and plain,” Flood says. “Soldiers want something that will restore the shape of their leg and make it cooler to look at when they’re playing sports.”

As for Shea, the aspiring musician can now play her viola with help from an adaptive device that Flood’s team created. “Nothing is ever going to hold her back,” Shea’s father, Steve, told a local reporter. “She is going to do what she wants to do, and we are going to be there to help her.”

This is an amazing invention that can help make life easier for some. How is this like the inventors that we have learned about? 

A Supersized Dinosaur

People in New York City can now meet the world’s biggest dinosaur.

BY LINDSAY LOWE

When you think of the biggest creature to ever roam the Earth, you might picture Tyrannosaurus rex. But T. rex would’ve looked small next to a titanosaur. Titanosaurs were the biggest known dinosaurs that ever lived.

Visitors to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City can now see just how huge these creatures really were. Last month, the museum installed a life-sized model of a titanosaur skeleton.

A BIG DISCOVERY

Titanosaurs walked the planet about 100 million years ago. Scientists have found titanosaur fossils (bones, shells, or other traces of animals or plants from millions of years ago, preserved as rock) on every continent. But in 2014, researchers in Argentina unearthed 84 fossils of bones from the largest titanosaur specimen, or example, ever discovered. Scientists determined that this huge herbivore (animal that eats only plants) weighed nearly 70 tons and was about 122 feet long. That’s roughly three times the length of a T. rex.

BUILDING A GIANT

Getting what might be the biggest dinosaur ever to a museum in New York City was quite a challenge. For starters, building a skeleton with the real fossils wasn’t possible. “These bones are extraordinarily heavy,” explains Mark Norell, a paleontologist (scientist who studies fossils and other ancient life-forms) at the AMNH. “Just the thighbone weighs well over 1,000 pounds.”

So Norell and his team decided to create a life-sized replica of the titanosaur. They worked with a company in Canada that used 3-D printers to make lightweight foam copies of each bone. Those replicas were then covered in a hard material called fiberglass. The model of that 1,000-pound thighbone weighs just 25 pounds. Creating the skeleton took about six months. Then it was shipped in pieces to the AMNH.

Next came the really tricky part—fitting the giant dinosaur into its new home. Museum workers had carefully measured the exhibit space and found that the titanosaur was too big to fit into one room! At 39 feet, the dino’s long neck and skull stick out of the exhibit room and into a hallway. The skeleton’s back nearly grazes the museum’s 19-foot-high ceilings. Norell says this exhibit gives visitors a rare, up-close look at the biggest prehistoric beast ever discovered.

“You can see people’s faces when they walk by,” he says. “They’re just amazed.”

We have learned about animal adaptations. How do you think being one of the biggest dinosaurs helped the titanosaur survive?

Terrifying Tooth

A fossil from the biggest shark that ever lived washes ashore in North Carolina.

A man named Denny Bland recently found something much more interesting than a seashell on the shore of North Topsail Beach, North Carolina. He discovered a 6-inch-long tooth. The huge tooth once belonged to a gigantic prehistoric shark called a megalodon.

“Megalodon was one of the scariest predators that ever lived,” says Cynthia Crane. She’s a scientist who runs the Aurora Fossil Museum in North Carolina. “This is mostly because of its humongous size and its constant urge to eat.”

Megalodons could measure up to 60 feet long. That’s bigger than a tractor-trailer truck. It’s also about three times the size of megalodon’s modern-day relative, the great white shark.

These prehistoric giants became extinct more than 2 million years ago. Almost everything scientists know about megalodons comes from their teeth. Megalodons’ skeletons, like those of modern sharks, were made of a soft material called cartilage instead of bone. (We have cartilage in our noses and ears.) Cartilage doesn’t turn into fossils. So, unlike dinosaurs, megalodons left no skeletons. Only fossils of their hard teeth survived.

Scientists have compared the megalodon teeth they’ve found with the teeth of modern sharks. In doing so, they have been able to calculate megalodon’s massive size.

The serrated teeth—teeth that have a rough, jagged edge, similar to a saw—have also given researchers clues about what megalodons ate. Scientists think the teeth’s rough edges were designed to rip apart the flesh of giant whales.

What do you think the megalodon ate? A share that big must of had a huge appetite. 

Whale Hunters

Japan stirs up a debate by restarting its whale-hunting program near Antarctica.

BY JOE BUBAR

In December, four ships armed with harpoons set sail from Japan. They were headed to the icy waters of the Southern Ocean near Antarctica. The ships are expected to capture and kill more than 300 whales by early March.

Japan’s whale hunts have been causing debates for years.Commercial whaling (hunting whales as a business) was banned worldwide in 1986, after many whale species had nearly been wiped out. But countries are still allowed to hunt whales for scientific research.

Japan has long claimed that its hunts are done in the name of science, but many animal rights groups and world leaders disagree. In March 2014, the United Nations (U.N.) ordered Japan to end its whale hunts near Antarctica. But this winter, Japanese whalers returned to the Southern Ocean in defiance(a refusal to follow rules or directions) of the U.N.’s orders.

A WHALE OF A DEBATE

Japan’s new whaling program is scheduled to last 12 years. During that time, Japan plans to kill 333 minke (MIN-kuh) whales per year—about one third as many as it hunted in the past. Japan claims that capturing whales will allow scientists to study the giant mammals up close and learn more about their diet and habits.

But opponents of Japan’s whaling program argue that the country is using research as an excuse. Critics say the true goal is to kill whales for their meat. The Japanese have been hunting whales for their meat for centuries and consider whaling an important part of their history.

WHALE WARS

One of the major opponents of Japan’s whaling program is a group called the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. As it has done in past years, the group sent a ship to the Southern Ocean to try to chase away the Japanese whalers. Paul Watson, the founder of Sea Shepherd, says that Japan is breaking international law. He argues that if Japan really wanted to study the whales, it wouldn’t be harming them.

“Anything that needs to be understood about the whales can certainly be discovered without killing them,” he says.

Do you think the Japanese whale hunters should continue or stop hunting whales? Tell why.

An Ancient Temple’s True Colors

A museum uses technology to shed light on Egypt’s colorful past

BY ANNE GOSSEN

 Artists in ancient Egypt painted sculptures and temples in bright colors. Over time, the paint on most of these ancient treasures has worn away. That’s why many of the Egyptian sculptures and temples displayed in museums today are stone-colored. We can only imagine how they originally looked.

Now, a new project at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City makes it easier to picture what these ancient treasures really looked like. In a display titled Color the Temple: Scene 1, light is projected onto a wall of the 2,000-year-old Temple of Dendur (DEN-duhr) to show what it likely looked like when it was freshly painted.

A HISTORIC MOVE

Originally located near the Nile River, the Temple of Dendur is a small structure that was completed around 10 B.C. Years of flooding washed away its paint. In the 1960s, the Egyptian government decided to create an artificial lake that would have submerged, or covered, the temple entirely. To save the temple, Egypt gave it to the United States as a gift. It was taken apart and shipped to the U.S. in 1965. Two years later, the U.S. government gave it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met built a special wing for it, which opened in 1978. It has been a visitor favorite ever since.

SEEING AN ANCIENT TREASURE IN A NEW LIGHT

The light display is a joint project between the Met’s art historians and a group at the museum called MediaLab that uses technology to create new experiences for visitors. The team chose one scene from the temple’s walls and researched what it might have looked like in color. They studied color illustrations of Egyptian temples from the same period. Historical writings describing what the Temple of Dendur looked like over a century ago were also helpful.

Using this information, they created a lighting display that projects colored light onto the scene’s detailed carvings. The projection shows the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus dressed as a pharaoh(king) in a white kilt and two Egyptian gods in colorful dress. It also highlights different details in the scene, such as the hieroglyphs (written characters). Visitors can see the display through March 19. The Met hopes to use more of this kind of technology in the future.

“We’d love to do all of the [temple’s] scenes!” says Marco Castro Cosio, the MediaLab team leader.

Using science to understand the true colors of the Egyptian artwork adds a deeper understanding of it's beauty. How can you use what you have learned about color to make your work better?

Victory For the Broncos!

The Denver Broncos defeat the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl 50

RONALD MARTINEZ—GETTY IMAGES

Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning receives the Vince Lombardi Trophy after defeating the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl 50.

On Sunday night, the Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers 24-10 to win football’s biggest contest. The match-up’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) award went to Broncos’ linebacker Von Miller. His forced fumbles paved the way for victory, and helped give teammate Peyton Manning the second Super Bowl win of his career. (Manning’s first win was with the Indianapolis Colts.)

BEN MARGOT—AP

Super Bowl MVP, Von Miller, chases a loose ball during the second half of the game.

Teamwork meant everything to Manning. After the game, he praised Miller and the Broncos’ entire defensive line.“Whenever you’re doing something for your buddies, it means a little bit more,” Miller said. “As human beings, we’re selfish, but when you’re doing something for somebody else, that’s when the magic happens.”

"I certainly knew that (with) this defense, this team would have a chance," Manning told the Associated Press. "Our defense has just been, from the get-go, they've been nothing but awesome. Being hurt and struggling early in the season wasn't a lot of fun so I was grateful to get back healthy and to try and play my part these last couple of weeks."

The Last Hurrah?

“All signs point to retirement,” says TIME’s Sean Gregory. “He’s played for 18 seasons . . . and now he can leave the game on top, with a second Super Bowl [win].” The big question now is whether Sunday night’s game was Manning’s last.

Manning, however, has not yet said when, or if, he’ll retire. After the game, he told reporters, “I’m going to take some time to reflect.”

A Golden Event

KEVIN MAZUR—WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES

Beyonce, Chris Martin of Coldplay, and Bruno Mars perform together during the Pepsi Super Bowl 50 Halftime Show.

This year’s Super Bowl was extra special. The game, held at Levi’s Stadium, in Santa Clara, California, marked the National Football League’s “golden” anniversary. To celebrate the occasion, the league honored 43 previous MVP’s before the game kicked off. The NFL also created a Super Bowl High School Honor Roll, which will give commemorative golden footballs to high schools for every Super Bowl player or head coach who attended the school.

More than 114 million people tuned in to watch Super Bowl 50, making it the most-watched television event in U.S. history. But viewers weren’t there just for the football. To many people, Super Bowl commercials and the halftime show are just as exciting as the game. Advertisers spend as much as $5 million to air a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl broadcast, CBS president Leslie Moonves told Fortune. Lots of money goes into producing the halftime show, too. This year, the show featured energetic and colorful performances by Coldplay, Beyoncé, and Bruno Mars.

Did you watch the Superbowl? if so, what was your favorite part of the game?

Commitment to Coding

President Barack Obama announces a plan to help students learn computer science

ANYA SEMENOFF—THE DENVER POST/GETTY IMAGES

Boris Cochajil, 14, works on a DVD cover project during the computer art lab portion of job training at Downtown Aurora Visual Arts in Aurora, Colorado. 

Following up on a proposal he made during his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama announced on January 30 his new Computer Science for All initiative. The $4 billion plan aims to fulfill Obama’s commitment to “offer every student the hands-on computer science and math classes that make them job-ready on day one,” as he described in his annual speech to Congress.

The CS for All initiative is intended to provide every student between kindergarten and 12th grade with computer science education. The $4 billion would be distributed to states over three years, with $100 million going directly to school districts, to train teachers and purchase high-quality instructional materials. 

“In the new economy, computer science isn’t an optional skill—it’s a basic skill, right along with the three ‘R’s,’ ” Obama said in his weekly radio address on January 30. 

A Growing Need

According to a statement released by the White House, while more than 90% of parents say they want their children to have computer science courses, only about 25% of schools in the United States offer quality coding and programming classes. In 22 states, computer science classes are not allowed to count towards high school graduation. At the same time, a growing number of jobs require computer science skills, including those in industries such as transportation, education, and health care. And there is a shortage of people who are qualified for the jobs. Last year, more than 600,000 high-paying tech jobs in the U.S. went unfilled. Experts predict that in the next two years, more than half of all Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) jobs will involve computer science.

EVAN VUCCI—GETTY IMAGES/POOL

President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address on January 12 in Washington, D.C.

The initiative is also designed to promote diversity in the tech industry. In 2015, only 22% of students who took the Advanced Placement Computer Science test were female. Only 13% of students who took the test were either African American or Latino. These percentages carried over to employees at big tech companies. Mandatory computer science classes, it is hoped, will encourage more students from all different backgrounds to confidently pursue technology driven careers.

How is this like what you did for Mrs. Sanchez in the computer lab? Do you think it is related to the article?

Return of the Panda Warrior

Kung Fu Panda 3 hits theaters today

DREAMWORKS ANIMATION

In Kung Fu Panda 3, Po joins forces with a group of pandas living in a hard-to-reach mountain village.

In the new film Kung Fu Panda 3, the main character Po finds himself on a soul-searching journey. The young panda is reunited with his long-lost father, and he also must save China from a supernatural villain named Kai who is determined to wipe out the entire country.

Po, who is trained in the martial art of Kung Fu, seeks refuge at a panda village deep in the mountains. He learns to harness his true potential in order to defeat Kai—and eventually finds his place in the universe.

This is the third film in the popular animated series. Fans of the first two films will find familiar characters such as Master Shifu and Mr. Ping as well as new ones including Kai.

The Voice of Kai

BRIAN GORDON/DREAMWORKS

Oscar Award winning actor J.K. Simmons voices the villain Kai in Kung Fu Panda 3.

In an interview with TFK, actor J.K. Simmons, the voice of Kai, admits that he doesn’t have much experience with martial arts. He is the only member of his family who doesn’t practice. “My wife has a black belt in Taekwondo and my kid does karate,” he told TFK. 

Simmons has an accomplished acting career. He won an Oscar last year for his role in the movie Whiplash, and has appeared on many TV shows and films in the past 30 years.

“It’s easier and less time consuming to do animated films,” Simmons says. For the film, he and the other actors — including Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Bryan Cranston, and Lucy Liu — went into recording studios to voice their characters separately and at different times. The process only took about eight hours. “Even though we weren’t in the same room, the directors did a brilliant job of keeping us on the same page,” he says.

Voicing Kai was a lot of fun. “He’s bigger and scarier than anyone I have played before,” he says. “It was pure playtime.”

Have you seen the movie? If so, how was it? If you have not seen the movie, would you want to see it from what you have learned?

Taking a Stand

Standing desks allow kids to think on their feet.

A student at Vallecito Elementary works at his desk.

The new year brought new desks for students at Vallecito Elementary School, in San Rafael, California. The last three of the school’s 22 classrooms switched from seated desks to standing desks. “It’s now the first all-standing school,” Juliet Starrett told TFK. She started the group StandUp Kids. Her goal is to have every U.S. public school kid using a standing desk within the next 10 years.

Starrett’s daughters—Georgia, 10, and Caroline, 7—attend Vallecito. They are thrilled with their desks. “You feel happier, you’re less tired, and you’re more active,” Georgia says.

Some of the desks have wheels and fidget bars. The bars let kids move in a way that doesn’t disturb the class. Wheels allow the desks to be moved easily. The desks also adjust to ­different heights. Kids take breaks by sitting on the floor or on stools.

TO SIT OR NOT TO SIT?

Ergonomics is the study of designing things to make them easy and safe to use. According to Mark Benden, the director of the Texas A&M Ergonomics Center, standing workers are more focused and healthier. He says his research shows that kids using standing desks are more engaged and burn more calories. In December, researchers in New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom released similar findings. But not everyone is convinced standing is better than sitting. Some parents and teachers worry that kids will get tired and that standing for long periods of time may be harmful. And standing desks are more expensive.

Benden says both sitting and standing desks can cause problems if they are not the proper height. “Our message should not be ‘Sit less, stand more,’” he says, “but ‘Sit less, move more.’”

Some teachers are for keeping sitting desks while allowing kids to read on a treadmill or an exercise bike. Others encourage daily dance and yoga breaks. Where do you stand on the ­issue? Vote in the poll below!

Do you think that you would like a desk without a seat? Please tell me why or why not. 

Celebrating Black History

Two important birthdays helped organizers choose February as the time to celebrate African Americans

SAUL LOEB—AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton speaks with students about Black History Month alongside a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Washington, D.C., on February 20, 2014.

In the early 1900s, Carter G. Woodson, an African-American historian, was frustrated. He did not feel that the history and accomplishments of black people were being taught or celebrated in the United States. While working to address this problem, Woodson set the foundation for what would become today’s national Black History Month. It is observed each February.

Woodson was studying history at Harvard University, in Massachusetts. He saw that black people were not well represented in history books. Black history was also not discussed in his classes. According to the way many historians taught the nation’s past, African Americans were barely part of the story.

GETTY IMAGES

This portrait, taken in the 1910s, shows American historian and educator Carter Godwin Woodson, who organized the first black history week.

Woodson knew this was not true. So in 1915, he and Jesse E. Moorland, a black minister and community leader, founded what would become the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, or the ASALH. The organization would promote studying black history and celebrate the accomplishments of African Americans.

Spotlight on Black History

In 1926, Woodson and the ASALH launched a black history week to bring attention to their mission and help schools organize lessons on the topic. Woodson chose the second week in February. That week held two very important dates: Frederick Douglass’ birthday on February 14 and Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on February 12. Douglass was a famous African-American writer, speaker, and anti-slavery activist. Lincoln was the U.S. president who made the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the nation’s slaves. Both were major figures in black history, and particularly in the fight against slavery. Honoring the two with a week celebrating African Americans made sense.

The celebration of black history week spread quickly, as the ASALH tells it. There was high demand for teaching materials. People even formed black history clubs. But, though a newfound understanding of black culture and literature was spreading among many people, the idea of expanding the week to a month did not come until several decades later.

UNIVERSAL IMAGE GROUP/GETTY IMAGES

Frederick Douglass was a former slave turned abolitionist, writer, and speaker.

By the mid-1960s, the most popular textbook for eighth-grade U.S. history classes mentioned only two black people in the entire 100 years since the Civil War. This problem could no longer be ignored. It was in that decade that colleges and universities across the country transformed the week into a Black History Month on campus.

A number of mayors had already adopted the celebration as a town or citywide event by the time President Gerald Ford decreed Black History Month a national observance in 1976.

“In celebrating Black History Month,” Ford said in his message, “we can seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”

Now, Black History Month is celebrated in February in schools and communities all over the country.

Presidents have issued national decrees with each year’s theme since the 1970s. African American History Month’s 2016 theme is “Hallowed Grounds: Sites of African American Memories.”

Can you tell me something you learned about a famous Black American?

Puppy Bowl 2016

For those who love football but love puppies even more—the 12th annual Puppy Bowl kicks off Sunday, February 7, on Animal Planet. This year’s competition will see Team Ruff go snout-to-snout with Team Fluff in a game that is sure to be a gridiron -classic. This “paws for a cause” event aims to find new homes for the pups, with all 88 of the canine athletes up for adoption. “We try to show what an amazing variety of dogs you can find up for adoption at your local shelter,“ referee Dan Schachner told TFK. “I guarantee they will all be adopted by the time the game is over.”

Click the link below to see the Puppy-Bowl

Puppy-Bowl Link

Do you think using the Puppy-Bowl as a means to help find pets find homes was a good idea?

Star Wars

It has been more than 10 years since a Star Wars movie hit the big screen. After six films, which have earned more than $4 billion worldwide, creator George Lucas considered the series finished with 2005’s Revenge of the Sith. But a seventh movie, The Force Awakens, opened on December 18.

Lucas, who wrote or cowrote all of the previous films and directed four of them, is no longer involved. But a new generation of filmmakers hopes to recapture the qualities and spirit that made Star Wars beloved around the globe. 

Click  the link to see the movie trailer.

Star Wars Trailer

Did you see the movie? if so tell us all about the movie

Let Girls Learn

In Ghana, a girl’s place is in the home. She is expected to learn to cook and clean and, one

day, get married and have children. Educating girls is considered a waste of money. “It happens more than it should, where parents have money to send their girls to school but choose not to,” says Ryan Roach, a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana, where nearly 55% of girls are not enrolled in secondary school. “Cultural beliefs say education is not a wise investment.”

The White House’s Let Girls Learn initiative is working to change this view of girls’ education, in Ghana and in countries worldwide. First Lady Michelle Obama says parents have to be persuaded that girls’ education is a better investment than marriage or household labor. For more, click  the video link below.

Let Girls Learn Video

How is girls not going to school in Ghana like civil rights and Martin Luther King Jr?

Inventions of 2015

What makes an invention great? Sometimes, an invention solves a problem you didn't think could be solved. Sometimes, an invention solves a problem you didn't even know you had. And sometimes, an invention just makes life more fun. Every year, TIME makes a list of the very best inventions. This video showcases five of our kid-friendly favorites.

Click the Link below to watch the latest inventions for 2015.
Inventions of 2015

Inventions are things that make life easier. If you could invent something, what would it be? 

Arctic Warming At All-Time High A new study finds record-high temperatures and less ice

According to the annual Arctic Report Card, released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Arctic is warmer than ever. The average air temperature over Arctic land reached 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit above average for the year ending in September. That's the highest since observations began in 1900.

"Warming is happening more than twice as fast in the Arctic than anywhere else in the world,” said NOAA chief scientist Rick Spinrad, at a meeting in San Francisco, California. “We know this is due to climate change.”

A Changed Environment

The Arctic is a polar region at the northernmost part of the earth. It centers on the North Pole and reaches into North America and Eurasia. With these record-high temperatures, the sea ice that forms when Arctic Ocean water freezes is melting. Even when the ice reached its peak coverage this past February, it was at its lowest amount since records began in 1979. The minimum ice coverage, reached in September, was the fourth lowest on record.

Melting ice takes a toll on animals, including walruses. Usually, these marine mammals haul themselves onto ice floes, or sheets of floating ice, to mate and give birth. But finding little ice, the walruses in Northwest Alaska have lately been crowding onto beaches. This is new behavior, and it can cause big problems, according to Martin Jeffries of the federal Office of Naval Research and Jackie Richter-Menge of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Crowds can lead to stampedes, putting baby walruses, called calves, in danger.

Snow cover in June in both the North American and Eurasian parts of the Arctic was at the second lowest level since scientists began recording in 1967. With less snow covering the ground, more sunlight gets through to the land, which soaks up the energy and gets warmer. June snow cover has been dropping by 18 percent every ten years since 1979, according to the study.

As kids, what can we do to help stop global warming?

Baby Chameleons

Chameleons are very interesting lizards. Learn how mother chameleons have babies and see how cute
the little ones are.


Click the link below to see a short video on baby chameleons.
Baby Chameleons

Do you think having a baby chameleon would be a good idea? Why or why not
Remember to respond in complete sentences.