Kids News - Articles for Grade 3

Earlier this year, Marianne Winkler, a retired postal worker and her husband were vacationing on the North Sea island of Amrum, Germany, when they stumbled upon a bottle with a message inside! And it was no ordinary letter either, but one written by an Edwardian British scientist studying undersea currents....

On August 13, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti along with officials from the water department watched as the last 20,000 "shade balls" rolled their way into the city's largest in-basin water reservoir. The release marked the final phase of the project that involved covering the 175-acre lake with 96-million four-inch black plastic balls. Their purpose? To provide shade and improve water quality....

At first sight, Mcity near Ann Arbor, Michigan looks just like any other U.S. town or city. However, look closer and you will notice that the buildings are merely facades and the sidewalks, eerily empty. In fact, the only things you will encounter are cars zipping around, many with no humans at the helm. Welcome to the world's first car city - a 32-acre vehicle haven created by the University of Michigan to test new automotive technology....

Can't decide between vacationing in the hot and arid deserts of Dubai or the freezing Arctic tundra? Then you may want to head to Stockholm's Arlanda Airport where an innovative climate portal allows travelers to experience worldwide weather with just a touch of a button....

Food waste is a growing concern. According to a recent report by the United Nations Environmental Programme, consumers in industrialized countries waste as much as 222 million tons of food annually. To put it in perspective, that is almost equivalent to the net food production of sub-Saharan Africa. Now the residents of the small Spanish town of Galdakao have devised a simple solution to help reverse the trend - a community refrigerator!...

Every year about this time, stargazers start to get excited about the Perseids, the biggest and most spectacular of all meteor showers. The "shooting stars" are already streaming through our skies at the rate of about a dozen an hour. However, from August 11 to 14, the pace will accelerate to almost a hundred an hour, making them fairly easy to spot even without a telescope. The best part is that unlike last year, there will be no "super" supermoon to steal their thunder....

To the novice listener, the Australian Chestnut-crowned babbler's sweet melodies may sound like any other birdsong. However, to ornithologists it is a series of sounds which when combined, forms a unique bird-like vocalization or what we refer to as language. The discovery is exciting because the tiny birds are the first nonhuman species known to communicate using language....

Our eyes tear up for various reasons. The most common, known as basal, are involuntary tears that are continuously being released to keep the cornea moist. Then there are reflex tears that are shed when eyes are exposed to irritants like dust or onion vapor. And finally, emotional or psychic tears that pour out when one is experiencing extreme happiness or grief....

After bidding farewell to his job as a designer for Ralph Lauren in 2011, Foster Huntington embarked on a nomadic lifestyle, traveling around the country in a Volkswagen Syncro Camper Van. To make ends meet, he worked as a photographer and blogger and even published a book called Home is Where You Park it, about his unusual lifestyle. But all good things have to come to an end. By 2014, the young man was ready to settle down in a more permanent home....